SpaceX will reportedly receive a $2 billion contract to develop satellites for the US government, according to the Wall Street Journal . The WSJ 's report detailed that SpaceX will be tasked with developing up to 600 satellites that can track missiles and aircraft and will be used for President Trump's proposed Golden Dome project. Announced back in May, the president introduced a project to build an anti-missile defense system that would intercept missile attacks before reaching their target. T

Here are some recently released titles to add to your reading list. This week, we read First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, plus James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds' take on Dracula now in black and white for extra creep-factor. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-a-deep-dive-into-humankinds-search-for-alien-life-201422007.html?src=rss

Ayaneo is breaking into the competitive smartphone market with its latest offering, but it's hoping to attract the mobile gamers out there. In a teaser posted to its YouTube, the gaming handheld maker offered its first look at the Ayaneo Phone. As vague as the trailer is, Ayaneo clearly has a target demographic in mind, describing the smartphone as when a mobile phone meets the soul of gaming handheld. From the teaser, it looks like the Ayaneo Phone will be built with a standard dual-camera setu

Later this month, Italian citizens will have one extra step to go through before getting on porn sites. On Friday, Italy's regulatory agency for communications, known as AGCOM, announced an age verification system that's meant to prevent minors from accessing websites with pornographic content. The initial list of sites covers around 50 sites, including Pornhub, XHamster and OnlyFans. The new rule will require users to get verified through certified third parties, which could be another company,

The World Series is headed to a Game 7 after the Los Angeles Dodgers tied up the series against the Toronto Blue Jays last night, 3-3. The Fall Classic remains on Toronto's home turf for Game 7 tonight Saturday, Nov. 1 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. The World Series odds still favor the Dodgers . The final 2025 MLB World Series game will air on Fox and Fox Deportes. Of course, Fox is a free over-the-air channel, so any affordable digital antenna will pull in the game if you live close enough to a local aff

If you already picked up a Switch 2, you're probably looking for deals that can help you kit out your new console without spending too much money. While maybe not the most exciting thing, a microSD Express card will be a key component for long-term gaming bliss. SanDisk's 256GB microSD Express Card for the Switch 2 is on sale for the first time ahead of Black Friday, down to $60 right now. This model is also available in storage sizes of 128GB and 512GB, but at the moment, only the 256GB model h

Early Black Friday deals are starting to pop up across the web, and a great one to check out is at Dyson . While we still think you have the best shot to get the steepest discounts the closer to Black Friday we get, some of the discounts on Dyson's site right now are some of the best we've seen. One of those is $290 off the Dyson V8 Absolute cordless vacuum , bringing it down to $300. Dyson devices are all over our list of the best cordless vacuums , and for good reason. The company makes effect

Elon Musk has told Joe Rogan that he hopes to unveil a flying car before the end of the year. As Gizmodo has reported, Rogan asked Musk about about the long-delayed second-gen Tesla Roadster in his show , when the Tesla CEO suddenly started talking about wanting the vehicle to fly. If you'll recall, Tesla unveiled a new Roadster in 2017 and had plans to start deliveries in 2020, but its production got delayed again and again. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently tweeted that he'd been having difficult

Techtober may have come to an end, but our reviews team is still hard at work with this falls haul of new devices. Over the last two weeks, weve tested two new Apple products, a powerful gaming handheld, some seriously impressive headphones and Metas sporty smart glasses and thats just the start. Read on to catch up on all you mightve missed, including our picks for the best of 2025 . Apple MacBook Pro M5 (14-inch) When it comes to the new M5-powered MacBook Pro, the question isnt whether its a

Apple continues to refine the look and feel of the iPhone with each major iOS release, and iOS 26 places more emphasis than ever on personalization. The one big change is the introduction of Spatial Scenes, a feature that allows you to create what Apple calls holographic lock screens. Instead of being a flat image, the wallpaper reacts to the way you move your device, giving it a sense of depth and motion that feels far more dynamic than a standard background. The effect is similar to the parall

Welcome to our latest roundup of what's going on in the indie game space. As always, we have a bunch of new games for you to check out this weekend, along with fresh looks at some upcoming projects and a release date or two. But first, I really enjoyed this week's edition of The Guardian 's Pushing Buttons newsletter. The publication's video games editor, Keza MacDonald, wrote about spending a day in a theater playing what sounds like the ultimate pass-the-controller game with dozens of other pe

Black Friday has become the time to buy the hottest tech of the year. Whether you're shopping for yourself or stocking up on gifts for the holidays, Black Friday deals are sure to bring the best prices of the year to things like headphones, game consoles, robot vacuums, phone accessories and everything in between. You don't even have to wait until Black Friday proper to save a ton of money. Over the past few years, we've seen Black Friday tech deals start earlier and earlier to the point where

If youre looking for a live TV streaming service, you probably want to watch live sports, catch local news or get access to your favorite linear channels perhaps you want all three. Cable was once the only way to get all that content in one place, but for a decade or so now, live TV streaming services have provided an alternative thats less confusing, easier to cancel and somewhat less expensive, though price hikes from every major streamer have brought the starting price to over $80 monthly fo

Private Internet Access (PIA) comes with some of the best pricing of any VPN, and often doesn't feel like a budget service. I say often because, sadly, it does sometimes feel like you get what you pay for with PIA. While I'm working on seeing what settings iron out the kinks, the fact is that PIA doesn't always leave you with the internet speeds you need for everyday use. If you've found PIA unreliable, you may want to know how to end your subscription, get a refund and trade up to a more stable

Rockstar Games, developer of Grand Theft Auto VI , has been accused of deliberately laying off employees who were trying to unionize, Bloomberg reports . The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) claims over 30 employees who were eliminated at the developer's offices in the UK and Canada were either already part of a union or attempting to organize. Rockstar has just carried out the most blatant and ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry, IWGB President Al

Bluesky is adding a dislike button as a way to signal the kind of posts you don't want to see in your Discover feed. The experiment is part of several new ideas Bluesky is exploring to a improve conversations on its platform. The new experiments Bluesky is running are primarily built around the notion of social proximity. The company says it's aiming to build a system that maps your place in a social neighborhood of people you already interact with or would likely enjoy knowing. By prioritizing

While YouTube TV is Engadget's pick for the best live TV streaming service , it isn't for everyone, especially right now. Google and Disney's ongoing carriage dispute means subscribers don't have access to channels like ABC and ESPN, and recent price hikes means paying for YouTube TV now costs a minimum of $83 a month. Whether you've switched to another service to hold on to your favorite channels or just want to save some money, there's ample reasons to cancel or pause your subscription right n

DJI just announced the Neo 2 selfie drone , a follow-up to last year's original. This upgraded model includes a whole lot of new features. Just make sure to set DJI's website to Hong Kong/China to see images and specs. Perhaps the biggest upgrade here is the inclusion of LiDAR sensors for obstacle avoidance. The LiDAR is paired with downward-looking infrared sensors so it should be much safer as the drone follows you during flight. It still has integrated guards to protect the propellers, but th

SOPA Images via Getty Images If you're a YouTube TV subscriber, you may have noticed that ABC, ESPN and other Disney-owned channels have gone dark on the platform today. The Walt Disney Co. has pulled its channels from YouTube TV as of midnight on Oct. 30 after the two companies failed to reach new terms on their latest carriage agreement. That means that until that negotiation is resolved, you won't be able to watch any programming from those stations. That includes all upcoming college footbal

The esports partnership between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Saudi Arabia is no more. On Thursday, the IOC said that it and the Saudi Olympic and Paralympic Committee (SOPC) have mutually agreed to part ways. The breakup comes weeks after Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and other investors bought EA for $55 billion . The IOC and SOPC agreed on a 12-year esports partnership in 2024. At the time, the IOC was reportedly in talks with publishers of Rocket League , Street Fighte

Apple's most recent iPad release is the iPad Pro with the new M5 chip (we called it perhaps the most impressive piece of hardware Apple sells in our review). Despite being only weeks old, it already has a $50 discount on the base configuration , bringing it to $949. As for the other iPads, we're seeing a discount on the standard iPad with the A16 chip that drops it to $299 . A handful of other Apple gear is on sale too, and we included those discounts below. There aren't nearly as many hot deals

Creative Labs, the maker of Sound Blaster audio cards, has launched a Kickstarter for a modular audio hub called Sound Blaster Re:Imagine. The universal hub, which is reminiscent of Elgato's Stream Deck , is meant to allow routing from any input to any output with the press of a button. Users can connect their gaming consoles, PC and musical instruments to the Re:Imagine, as well as speakers, wired headsets and wireless headphones, transitioning seamlessly between them. The system uses magnetic

The Republican-led FCC has voted on and approved a proposal that would make it harder for consumers to receive itemized bills with accurate information from their ISPs, as originally spotted by CNET . This proposal revises previous unnecessary requirements on the grounds that a fact-based list of charges may confuse customers. These changes would minimize the benefit of the so-called nutrition labels which are otherwise known as Broadband Facts labels. You've likely run into these simple itemize

Perplexity AI has agreed to a multi-year licensing partnership with Getty Images that will allow its users to access the latters extensive library of images. Leveraging Gettys API, Perplexity will integrate the visual media distributors huge collection of stock and editorial imagery within its AI search and discovery tools, with correct attribution being a key part of the agreement. In a press release , Getty said that Perplexity will be making improvements on how it displays imagery, including

Some of the most successful creators on Facebook aren't names you'd ever recognize. In fact, many of their pages don't have a face or recognizable persona attached. Instead, they run pages dedicated to memes, animal videos and yes, AI-generated photos and videos. The people behind these pages are experts at creating content that can catch Facebook's algorithm and go viral. Successful pages can generate tens of thousands of dollars a month from performance bonuses, revenue-sharing and other monet

One of our favorite power banks is on sale for one of the best prices we've seen, period. The Anker MagGo Power Bank 10K has dropped to only $57, which is 37 percent off its usual price. To put it into perspective, the lowest we've tracked it is $54, and that only happened briefly at the end of 2024. Today's sale applies to multiple colorways. This model topped our list of the best power banks , and with very good reason. It's a workhorse that gets the job done. It includes Qi2 tech for fast wir

The Apple MacBook Air M4 laptop is back on sale for just $799 , which is one heck of a deal. This sale is for the model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. It's available in multiple colorways. We ranked this as our favorite Apple laptop in our list of the best MacBook computers . Heck, it's even our very favorite laptop . Full stop. The performance is exceptionally snappy, thanks to the M4 chip. We appreciated the upgraded battery life, which now lasts for around 18 hours per charge

Googles AI ambitions are global in scale, so much so that it has just agreed to give Gemini away for free in India to people using the country's biggest mobile provider. Thanks to a deal with Reliance Intelligence, an AI-focused subsidiary of Reliance Industries, people signed up to Jios Unlimited 5G plan will be offered Google AI Pro at no extra cost for 18 months. That means that qualifying users will have access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Googles most advanced AI model. They will also benefit from hi

NVIDIA has teamed up with with South Korea's biggest companies and the country itself, as they build out their AI infrastructure. One of those companies is Samsung, which is building a new AI factory that will use 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell server GPUs and other NVIDIA technologies to make its own chips. This AI-driven semiconductor manufacturing, as the companies call it, will help Samsung improve its processes, better predict maintenance needs and improve the efficiency of its autonomous operatio

The Bose QuietComfort headphones (the non-Ultra variety) are on sale. Best Buy's early Black Friday sale has the comfy cans for 45 percent off, knocking their price down to $199. That matches their record low from Prime Day . Bose's headphones have top-notch comfort and active noise cancellation (ANC). For the latter, you can choose between Quiet (full ANC) and Aware (hear your surroundings) modes. There's also a wind-blocking feature. The headphones' audio, while not quite on par with the $449

If you're in the market for a budget-friendly home security camera (or even several), the Blink Mini 2 may be worth considering. A two-pack of the cameras is on sale at Amazon as the bundle has dropped from $70 to $28 . That's a discount of 60 percent, which is certainly nothing to shake at. This is also a better price than the $35 we saw for the cameras during Prime Day . Amazon recently revealed a newer version of the Blink Mini that records 2K footage, but the 1080p Blink Mini 2 can still get

Those looking for a better way to keep track of their finances should consider a budgeting app . There are dozens of them on the market now, and one of our favorites is running a discount for new subscribers. Monarch Money is offering 50 percent off annual plans right now when you use the code MONARCHVIP at checkout. With the typical yearly price being $100, this will save you $50. As mentioned before, the discount is only for new users and it can't be combined with other offers. The code only w

A good VPN is worth paying for. Almost every service I'll recommend as one of the best VPNs is either subscription-only or supported by paid plans. Free VPNs do have their place, though, as not everybody can afford yet another subscription in the software-as-a-service hellscape we live in. Since everyone deserves privacy and flexibility online, I wanted to put together a definitive list of the best free VPNs. Now, some will say that free VPNs are, by definition, security risks that are to be avo

Disney's channels have gone dark on YouTube TV after the companies failed to reach an agreement by their October 30 deadline. The affected channels include ESPN, local ABC stations, ABC News, FX, NatGeo, Disney Channel and Freeform. Last week Disney used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers, YouTube said in an announcement on its blog . Theyre now following through on that threat, suspending their content on Y

Home robots are moving way beyond Roombas. 1X unveiled its NEO helper bot this week, a terrifying $20,000 machine that can perform basic tasks after you've trained it, and more complex tasks via teleoperation. In this episode, Devindra and Engadget's Igor Bonafacic try to figure out why 1X made the Neo look like a murderbot, as well as the future they see for home robots. Also, we discuss last week's AWS outage and our over-reliance on a single cloud provider, as well as Apple's rumored push for

Microsofts latest earnings report for the quarter ending on September 30 revealed that revenue from the Xbox hardware fell 30 percent year over year. Worse, in a way, this revenue decline doesnt reflect any dip in sales caused by the consoles $20 to $70 price hike, since that took effect on October 3 after this earnings report. (Oh, and Microsoft raised the price for its Game Pass Ultimate subscription from $20 to $30 in October.) Fortunately, revenue from Xbox content and services, specificall

The Toronto Blue Jays have taken the lead in the 2025 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Fall Classic returns to Toronto's home turf for Game 6 tonight Friday, Oct. 31 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. The World Series odds still favor the Dodgers ahead of tonight's game, meaning we may very well make it to a Game 7. Every 2025 MLB World Series game will air on Fox and Fox Deportes. Of course, Fox is a free over-the-air channel, so any affordable digital antenna will pull in the game if you liv

Projectors have come a long way from bulky, noisy boxes that only belonged in a dedicated home theater. Todays models are brighter, sharper and more flexible, making them a practical upgrade for movie nights, gaming sessions or backyard screenings. Whether you want a compact projector that fits in a backpack or a full 4K setup for your living room, theres something to match nearly every space and budget. Modern projectors handle far more than films. Some are tuned for low-latency gaming, others

OpenAI has started selling power users extra credits for its Sora AI video generation tool. An extra 10 video gens will retail for $4 through Apples App Store. The company currently has a limit of 30 free gens per day, a rate that will likely decrease as OpenAI starts to monetize the offering. Bill Peebles, who heads OpenAI's Sora, posted on X about the changes. Eventually we will need to bring the free gens down to accommodate growth (we won't have enough gpus to do it otherwise!), but well be

The future of Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher, subscription-free alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud, was uncertain after the apps' developer Serif was acquired by Canva in 2024. Now, over a year later, the changes Canva has introduced are big, but not necessarily unwelcome. The newly relaunched Affinity by Canva combines all three apps into a single piece of illustration, photo editing and layout software, and rather than move to a subscription model as many feared, Canva's made it enti

Disney+ is making its first foray into HDR10+ content, but access to this content will be limited at the start. About 1,000 shows from Hulu will be available with this HDR standard, although other programming under the Disney umbrella will add support at an unspecified later date. Samsung, which is a major player behind this standard for high dynamic range video, announced the news. Disney+ will first offer the HDR10+ content on Samsung Crystal UHD TVs and above for models dating back to 2018, a

Nearly a decade after NASA partnered with Lockheed Martin to build the X-59, the supersonic jet has completed its first flight in California, according to a press release spotted by Gizmodo . The X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (Quesst) aircraft is designed to reach supersonic speeds without the sonic boom, and now with this latest test flight complete, NASA and Lockheed plan to conduct future tests to measure the X-59's sound signature and conduct community acceptance testing. The flight on Tu

Much like Half-Life: Alyx , Thief's long-awaited return is a VR exclusive. The game was announced in June, but now we know when it will arrive. You can play the pioneering stealth franchise's new chapter, Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow , on December 4. Thief VR takes place about halfway between the events of the original trilogy and Thief (2014) . You play as Magpie, a cunning thief (duh), who discovers a legendary eye artifact with a mysterious connection to the past. You're operating in a city tha

We learned last month that Call of Duty would be making the leap to the big screen with a planned motion picture project. Today, Deadline reported that two of the main creative forces behind the movie will be Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg. Sheridan and Berg previously both worked on the 2016 film Hell or High Water and 2017's Wind River . Berg was a producer on those projects, but he's perhaps better known as a writer for the football drama Friday Night Lights . Sheridan's most recent endeavor

Dyson is holding an early Black Friday sale on vacuums and related products. Sure, Black Friday isn't for another month, but who are we to turn down a fantastic deal? To that end, the Dyson V8 Absolute cordless vacuum is on sale for just $300 , which is a discount of $290. That's nearly half off. Dyson devices are all over our list of the best cordless vacuums , and for good reason. The company makes effective products. The V8 Absolute has been designed to clean all floor types, in addition to u

Unless you're a PC nerd like me, chances are you're not familiar with Fractal Design . The company has made a name for itself in recent years by designing some of the best cases you can buy for a DIY build. In a space known for its gaudy aesthetics, Fractal's products stand out for their simplicity. Now the company is entering the crowded audio space with the $200 Scape , a gaming headset that not only looks sophisticated, but also sounds surprisingly great too. Design The Fractal Scape features

Immersive productivity for Windows 11 is now available on the Meta Quest 3 and 3S with the latest release of Meta's Horizon OS. The feature, called Mixed Reality Link, was available on a limited basis after public previews began last year. The Windows virtual desktop experience is now rolling out to all users. After installing Mixed Reality Link on their Windows 11 PC, users will pair the machine with their Meta Quest headsets. Mixed Reality Link also supports portable, cloud-based solutions suc

On Thursday, Samsung launched a desktop version of its web browser. Why bother putting its mobile browser on Windows? Well, the company offers a hint in describing Samsung Internet as evolving from a PC browser that waits for input to an integrated AI platform. So, surprise, surprise: It's about AI. As one would imagine, Samsung Internet on Windows supports cross-platform syncing of data like bookmarks, browsing history and autofill. The company says it also prioritizes privacy and security, off

It's been around three and a half years since season four of Stranger Things premiered. We finally have an actual trailer for the fifth and final season of Netflix's retro-soaked adventure series. It's a good thing, as the first batch of episodes drop on November 26. As previously mentioned, this is a real trailer with tons of footage and not a teaser. It's over two minutes of Hawkins-based goodness. This is an action-packed affair that's heavy on emotion and light on the type of 1980s-style hum

Pinterest is adding a new way to find clothes, furniture and other sources of aesthetic inspiration through its app. It's called Pinterest Assistant, and it's an AI-powered search and recommendation tool that uses knowledge of your Pinterest activity to tailor its responses. Whereas other search features work best when you have a specific thing you're looking for in mind, Pinterest says the Pinterest Assistant is meant to handle more open-ended requests. Asking for pillows that match your living