Technology

Whew, it’s been a crazy few weeks for us at Engadget. School may still be out, but there’s no summer break for the steady stream of new gadgets coming across our desks. I’ll forgive you if you missed a review or two over the last few weeks — we’ve been busy. Here’s a quick rundown … Read more

Instagram is no longer allowing public accounts to go live if they have less than 1,000 followers. Users have been reporting over the past few days that their accounts aren’t eligible for Live broadcast on the app anymore. “We changed the requirements to use this feature,” reads the notice that pops up when people try … Read more

Welcome to our latest recap of what’s going on in the indie game space. A bunch of new games dropped this week that are more than worthy of your attention, including a modern take on an old-school Ninja Gaiden side-scroller and a joyful (perhaps even profound) puzzler about the life of a housefly. By far … Read more

In partnership with developers, game marketplace GOG (Good Old Games) has launched a new website called FreedomtoBuy.games that’ll let you download select “adult” games for free. GOG believes the website takes a stand “against the quiet erasure of creative works from digital shelves,” a response of sorts to recent decisions from Steam and Itch to … Read more

T-Mobile has sealed the deal on its UScellular acquisition. In exchange for $4.3 billion, T-Mobile gets UScellular’s customers, stores and 30 percent of its spectrum. If you’re a UScellular customer, you don’t have to do anything. “UScellular customers stay on their existing plans with no changes for now,” the carrier said. You can continue to … Read more

OpenAI has removed a feature that made shared ChatGPT conversations appear in search results. The “short-lived experiment” was based on the chatbot’s link creation option. After complaints, OpenAI’s chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, said the company is working to remove the chats from search engines. The public outrage stems from a Fast Company article … Read more

Microsoft is ending support for its ChromeOS competitor Windows 11 SE. The company will officially stop providing “software updates, technical assistance and security fixes” in October 2026, according to an updated support document spotted by NeoWin.  When it was announced in 2021, Windows 11 SE was pitched as a simplified, lightweight version of Microsoft’s operating … Read more

A jury in Florida has found Tesla partially liable for a 2019 crash involving the company’s Autopilot self-driving feature, The Washington Post reports. As a result, the company will have to pay $200 million in damages. Autopilot comes pre-installed on Tesla’s cars and handles things like collision detection and emergency braking. Tesla has mostly avoided … Read more

Reddit is reversing course on its plans to put some subreddits behind a paywall, at least for now. CEO Steve Huffman said the company is “shifting resources away” from the effort as it doubles down on search. During the company’s recent earnings call, Huffman said that Reddit was “deprioritizing” its work on “user economy” initiatives … Read more

Google’s shortened URLs are the horror movie monster of the Google Graveyard: They keep finding a way to stay alive. On Friday, the company said goo.gl links that don’t show the above warning will work for the foreseeable future.  In 2018, Google cut off the ability to create new shortened links. But it kept existing … Read more