12-24-25 -

US bans former EU Commissioner and others over social media rules
The Trump administration has issued travel bans that prohibit five European tech researchers, including one former EU Commissioner, from entering the United States. “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce Ame...

12-23-25 -

IO Interactive's 007 First Light has been delayed until May 27
IO Interactive's James Bond simulator 007 First Light has been delayed until May 27, 2026. It was supposed to come out in March. The company says two-month delay is for polish and refinement, which is fine by me. I'd always rather ...

12-23-25 -

Engadget Podcast: Why is the Nex Playground 'AI console' such a hit?
Over the past two years, the Nex Playground has carved out a niche for itself with kids and parents alike. It's a small box that sits in front of your TV and uses a camera, along with computer vision AI processing, to track your movement f...

12-23-25 -

Xbox cloud gaming comes to newer Amazon Fire TV models
Xbox has brought cloud gaming gaming to some Amazon Fire TV models. These include the Fire TV 4-Series and the Fire TV Omni QLED Series. This lets people play Xbox games directly on the television, without needing a bulky console or even something...

12-23-25 -

New York Times reporter files lawsuit against AI companies
Investigative reporter John Carreyrou of the New York Times filed a lawsuit against xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta and Perplexity on Monday for allegedly training their AI models on copyrighted books without permission. Carreyrou is perhaps ...

12-23-25 -

Apple's iOS 26.3 will introduce proximity pairing to third-party devices in t...
Apple is making it a little easier to use third-party devices with iPhones in order to comply with Europe's Digital Market Act (DMA), MacRumors reported. For iOS 26.3, Apple's devices will support third-party proximity pairing and ...

12-23-25 -

The best gifts cards to give this holiday season: Amazon, Apple, Best Buy and...
This late in the game, it’s not possible to ship gifts to friends and family and have them arrive before the holidays. But that’s ok because it’s never been easier to give a digital gift that will arrive basically whenever you want it to. If...

12-23-25 -

2025 was the year Xbox died
Want to see a dead body? I present to you the Xbox. After a subdued launch at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the Xbox Series X quickly lost the fight against the PlayStation 5. Microsoft simply couldn't deliver enough compelling...

12-23-25 -

CES 2026: Everything we're expecting from tech's biggest conference in January
As we hurtle towards the end of the year, the shadow of CES hovers on the horizon. Tech’s biggest annual conference is starting in just under two weeks, and we already know some of the products and announcements that could be in store. The CES 2...

12-23-25 -

The Morning After: The best games of 2025
As many of us hunker down for the holidays, you might want to tackle some of the best games we’ve seen this year: the long-time-coming Silksong, the critically acclaimed (and sumptuous) Expedition 33 and the bizarre world of Baby Steps. Engadget...

12-23-25 -

How to set up an Apple Watch for a child
Giving a child an Apple Watch can offer extra peace of mind and tools that promote independence in a controlled way. Apple’s Family Setup feature makes it possible for a kid to use an Apple Watch without owning an iPhone, and the feature set has...

12-23-25 -

US bans new foreign-made drones and components
The Federal Communications Commission has added foreign-made drones and their critical components to the agency’s “Covered List,” making them prohibited to import into the US. In a public notice published by the FCC, it said several national...

12-22-25 -

Nintendo has huge discounts on Switch 2 games in its holiday sale
Nintendo is in a giving state of mind this season, offering some holiday deals on games in the eShop, including a few recent Switch 2 titles. For instance, the Switch 2 version of Ball x Pit, which was one of our staff's favorite games of ...

12-22-25 -

Pirate group Anna's Archive says it has scraped Spotify in its entirety
Anna's Archive, the open-source search engine for shadow libraries, says it scraped Spotify's entire library of music. The group acquired metadata for around 256 million tracks, with 86 million actual songs, and is just under 300TB...

12-22-25 -

Call of Duty co-creator Vince Zampella killed in a car crash
Game developer Vince Zampella, known for his work on many popular first-person shooter franchises, has died. According to Los Angeles news channel NBC4, Zampella was killed in a single-vehicle car crash on Sunday along with one other unnamed perso...

12-22-25 -

The Indie Game Awards snatches back two trophies from Clair Obscur over its u...
The Indie Game Awards has stripped Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 of two major awards, including Game of the Year and Debut Game. This is due to developer Sandfall Interactive's use of generative AI, as reported by Mashable. This looks to be ...

12-22-25 -

Uber allows violent felons to drive on its platform, investigation finds
An investigation by the New York Times into Uber's background checks and safety procedures for its drivers found a patchwork approach that opens the door for violent felons to drive for the ride-hailing platform. Uber outright rejects applicants c...

12-22-25 -

Paramount has an updated Warner Bros. Discovery bid
Paramount Skydance isn't giving up on obtaining Warner Bros. Discovery just yet. The company has amended its $108 billion offer to include Larry Ellison's "irrevocable personal guarantee" equaling $40.4 billion. E...

12-22-25 -

Instacart is ending its controversial price tests
Instacart has announced it will be ending price testing on its platform. This comes after a study published earlier this month revealed pricing experiments that led to some customers seeing higher prices than others and the FTC saying last week it...

12-22-25 -

How to pair controllers with the Nintendo Switch 2
The Nintendo Switch 2 supports a wide range of controllers, from Nintendo’s own Pro Controller to many Bluetooth gamepads you might already have. Whether you’re setting up your new console for the first time or adding extra controllers for mul...

12-22-25 -

Foldable phone makers have solved every issue except one
It might be hard to believe, but foldable phones have already been around for the better part of a decade. Granted, the first one I saw back in 2019 — which actually predates Samsung's Galaxy Fold — was a cobbled-together mess. But sin...

12-22-25 -

Waymo vehicles are operating again in San Francisco following a power outage
Waymo has resumed its robo-taxi service in San Francisco after a power outage stranded vehicles around the city, CNBC reported. The blackout, caused by a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) substation fire, caused traffic light disruptio...

12-21-25 -

You can now tweak how warm and enthusiastic ChatGPT's responses are
OpenAI gave its AI chatbot a professional makeover with the latest GPT-5.2 release, and some users are already complaining about its tone. For anyone who's finding ChatGPT rude or sassy, OpenAI has some welcome news since it's lett...

12-21-25 -

GuliKit's $20 mod makes the ROG Xbox Ally's joysticks drift-free
There may not be any reports of stick drift with the ROG Xbox Ally yet, but that doesn't mean there won't be. If you'd rather not end up with joysticks that have a mind of their own, GuliKit revealed its latest TMR Electrom...

12-21-25 -

A San Francisco power outage left Waymo's self-driving cars stranded at inter...
Several of Waymo's autonomous vehicles were seen stuck in the middle of San Francisco streets following a significant power outage that took out the city's traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending its ride-...

12-20-25 -

Governor Hochul signs New York's AI safety act
New York governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation on Friday aimed at holding large AI developers accountable for the safety of their models. The RAISE Act establishes rules for greater transparency, requiring these companies to publish information...

12-20-25 -

Sony's first EV with Honda will let you remotely play PS5 in your car
Faraway road trips just got a lot easier, at least for the passengers. Sony Honda Mobility, the joint venture between the two Japanese conglomerates created to produce electric vehicles, announced that its Afeela EV will come with PS Remote Play. ...

12-20-25 -

Game publisher says cheaper Switch 2 cartridges are coming in since-deleted post
Gamers who prefer physical copies of their favorite titles may be getting a major win with the Switch 2. In an unexpected announcement from retro video game publisher ININ Games, Nintendo reportedly has "two new smaller cartridge sizes&am...

12-20-25 -

Valve discontinued the last remaining LCD model of the Steam Deck
If you still haven't bought into the Steam Deck craze, it'll cost you a little extra to take the plunge now since Valve is only offering OLED models. Valve announced in a note on its Steam Deck page that it's "no l...

12-20-25 -

AirTags are back on sale for $65 for a four-pack
Most Apple products are pretty expensive, but some of the most affordable (and useful) ones are AirTags. The Bluetooth trackers are priced pretty reasonably even when not on sale, but they can be a steal if you can get them on a discount — like ...

12-20-25 -

AirPods Pro 3 drop to a record low of $199
If you haven't yet upgraded to Apple's AirPods Pro 3, you can pick up the company's latest model at a discount through a deal on Amazon right now. The AirPods Pro 3, which came out in September, are currently down to $199. ...

12-20-25 -

Google Assistant will stick around a bit longer than expected for some Androi...
Google wanted to remove Assistant from most Android phones by the end of 2025 and replace it with Gemini. But now the company has announced that it needs a bit more time to make its AI assistant the new default digital helper for most of its users...

12-19-25 -

Claude's Chrome plugin is now available to all paid users
Anthropic is finally letting more people use Claude in Google Chrome. The company's AI browser plugin is expanding beyond $200-per-month Max subscribers and is now available to anyone who pays for a Claude subscription. The Claude...

12-19-25 -

Netflix is acquiring game avatar maker Ready Player Me
Netflix is acquiring Estonian startup Ready Player Me, a company creating "cross-game avatar tech" that allows players to bring their digital personas with them to different games, the company's CEO Timmu Tõke shared in ...

12-19-25 -

Get up to 78 percent off ExpressVPN two-year plans for the holidays
It looks like the holidays aren't a bad time to shop for a VPN subscription. ExpressVPN, Engadget's pick for the best premium provider, currently has a less premium price. This deal gives you two years of the Advanced plan (with a bonus of four fr...

12-19-25 -

The best iPad deals this week include the iPad mini for $100 off
The iPad, of course, isn't the only tablet computer out there — it wasn't even the first — but Apple's version redefined the category. In our opinion, it's the best tablet you can buy and these slates consistent...

12-19-25 -

Mark Zuckerberg's nonprofit cuts ties with the immigration advocacy group he ...
Behold Mark Zuckerberg: man of principle. Witness the Meta CEO's dedication to the most high-minded of causes: "currying favor with whoever's in charge." In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, Zuckerberg co-founded FWD.us, a pro-immig...

12-19-25 -

Apple's USB-C Magic Mouse is back on sale for $68
Amazon is selling Apple's USB-C Magic Mouse for $68, which is a discount of 14 percent. This isn't a record-low price, but it's darned close. The mouse typically sells for $79, though today's sale only applies to th...

12-19-25 -

We have more details on the TikTok deal, including some ownership statistics
TikTok has signed a deal to spin off its American business, according to reporting from Associated Press and others. This should keep the popular social media app available in the US for good, capping off years of drama. We now have some new data ...

12-19-25 -

One of our favorite budgeting apps is 50 percent off right now
If you have a resolution in the new year to get more acquainted with your finances, a good budgeting app can help with that. One of our favorites is a bit cheaper to sign up for right now: Monarch Money is offering 50 percent off annual subscripti...

12-19-25 -

Engadget's favorite games of 2025
From indies like Silksong, to AAAs like Ghost of Yotei, and everything in between, 2025 truly had it all, and is likely to go down in the history books as one of the best years in gaming. But these are the games that felt truly special to the Enga...

12-19-25 -

Engadget Podcast: 2025 was the year of AI, smartglasses and spineless Big Tech
This week, Engadget Managing Editor Cherlynn Low joins us to look back at some of the highlights (and lowlights) of 2025. We dive into our favorite gadgets of the year, the many ways Big Tech bowed to Trump, the disappointment of AI PCs and the ri...

12-19-25 -

MasterClass deal: Get 50 percent off subscriptions for the holidays
If learning a new skill is one of your New Year's resolutions, then you might want to know that MasterClass subscriptions are currently 50 percent off. This brings the top-tier subscription with offline mode and use on up to six devices do...

12-19-25 -

A total League of Legends revamp is coming in 2027
Riot Games has confirmed that it’s working on a massive update for League of Legends after Bloomberg published a report saying that the company has plans to remake the game. Back in November, a Chinese esports insider also reported that a League...

12-19-25 -

Pick up the Samsung P9 microSD Express card for Switch 2 while it's down to a...
It was a big day in gaming history when Nintendo finally released its Switch sequel. But the Nintendo Switch 2 lacked many options for microSD Express cards. Samsung helped change that this fall, with the release of its P9 Express series of microS...

12-19-25 -

The Morning After: The highest rated tech of 2025
The best phone of 2025: The iPhone 17 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro? Perhaps the Galaxy Z Fold 7? All three rank as some of the best tech we reviewed in 2025. Engadget We have compiled all the best gear with our highest review scores in each category, after t...

12-19-25 -

A Starlink satellite just exploded and left 'trackable' debris
SpaceX said it experienced an anomaly with one if its Starlink satellites that was likely caused by a small explosion. "The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km [2.5 miles] and the ...

12-18-25 -

Sony is buying Peanuts
Sony is paying approximately $460 milliion to purchase Peanuts [PDF] and its characters, including Snoopy and Charlie Brown, created by Charles M. Schulz. That’s a 41 percent stake Sony is buying from Canadian firm WildBrain. Since Sony bought 3...

12-18-25 -

Trump's TikTok deal is another step closer to finally actually happening
Remember back in September when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seemingly finalized some of the terms of a deal to spin off TikTok's US business? Three months later, that same deal is apparently one step closer to bei...

12-18-25 -

Steam Winter Sale discounts Clair Obscur, Silent Hill f and more
Holiday shopping is in full swing, which means it's about time for the Steam Winter Sale. This go-around, Valve’s sale runs from December 18, 2025 through January 5, 2026, and includes discounts on some of this year's hit games, ...