Taylor Swift’s love story just turned into a proposal. Get the timeline of Travis Kelce’s proposal and their engagement story.
Taylor Swift’s love story just turned into a proposal. Get the timeline of Travis Kelce’s proposal and their engagement story.
Chipolo is adding two rechargeable Bluetooth trackers to its lineup. The new Chipolo Loop and Chipolo Card trackers are compatible with both the Apple Find My network and Google’s Find Hub. The new trackers are available for pre-order on the Chipolo website today.
The Card tracker is thin enough to fit inside your wallet and has a speaker in the corner capable of reaching 110 dB, to ensure you can hear it easily. It comes in black and will retail for $39. The Loop is a small circular tag reminiscent of an AirTag but with a silicone casing that makes it easy to attach to other objects. It will be offered in six different colors and retails for $39. At 125 dB, the Loop gets even louder than the Card. Loop and Card are capable of making your phone ring even when it’s on silent by pressing the button on the tracker itself.
While both new products are rechargeable, the Card is compatible with Qi wireless chargers, which the company says it will automatically align with. Card and Loop boast a 400-foot Bluetooth range, and both carry an IP67 rating, making them waterproof up to a 1-meter depth in fresh water for up to 30 minutes, and dustproof.
Chipolo’s Pop Bluetooth tracker currently sits atop our list of the best Bluetooth trackers for its ease of use, features, wide compatibility and the company’s focus on sustainability. Chipolo products are made in Europe from around 50 percent recycled materials.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/chipolo-launches-new-loop-and-card-bluetooth-trackers-130009817.html?src=rss
Travis’ dad, Ed Kelce, basically spilled all the tea that fans were looking for about the proposal.
Travis’ dad, Ed Kelce, basically spilled all the tea that fans were looking for about the proposal.
Introduction: A New Dimension of Food We’ve learned to look at food through numbers. Calories, grams of protein, percentages of daily values for vitamins. These figures are convenient; they create a sense of control. But there is another, quieter, less obvious measure that changes everything. It doesn’t appear in bold on labels. It’s rarely mentioned…
Introduction: A New Dimension of Food We’ve learned to look at food through numbers. Calories, grams of protein, percentages of daily values for vitamins. These figures are convenient; they create a sense of control. But there is another, quieter, less obvious measure that changes everything. It doesn’t appear in bold on labels. It’s rarely mentioned…
Alphabet’s Verily was one of the company’s star “moonshot” businesses, with its research delving into areas ranging from connected diabetes therapies to robot surgery. Now, Verily has shuttered its medical device division and laid off staff, the company announced in a memo seen by Business Insider. The number of employees who lost their jobs was not revealed.
“We have made the difficult decision to discontinue manufacturing medical devices and will no longer be supporting them going forward,” a spokesperson told BI. The cuts are a continuation of Alphabet’s 2023 strategic shift that saw the company cut 12,000 positions across multiple divisions while putting more resources toward AI and data infrastructure.
CEO Stephen Gillett highlighted some of Verily’s achievements, “from the launch of the Dexcom G7 CGM [a diabetes management system], to the Stargazer VNRC launch [a drug targeting system] launch with 7,800 patients screened… and these contributions have advanced patient care and medial research.”
The medical devices division may not have been a profit maker for Alphabet, but it certainly provided research in a critical area. Verily will now focus on its “core mission,” Gillett said, namely “precision health, data and AI.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/alphabets-verily-closes-its-medical-device-division-and-lays-off-staff-120009404.html?src=rss
It’s been a while since Tim Schafer’s done press briefings, he admits. The head of Double Fine, a studio best known for the Psychonauts series, is trying to explain Keeper, a puzzle adventure game where you are, literally, a sentient, walking lighthouse. Double Fine is now one of several studios bought up by Microsoft and the team apparently took the opportunity to lean into all the resources available and, he said, “make something weird.”
It’s definitely that. The colors and atmosphere of Keeper have at least the touch of Psychonauts DNA. Keeper puts players in control of the aforementioned lighthouse, awakened (and joined) by a curious, occasionally aggressive, bird named Twig. Interestingly, the lighthouse currently has no name.
Double Fine’s art director, Lee Petty came up with the concept for the game, apparently inspired by his time spent hiking during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is reflected in a lot of ways, whether its the rolling hills and landscapes that the anthropomorphised lighthouse roams, or the fact that there’s not a single word of dialogue. The interactions between the bird and building, which seem to pepper both cutscenes and gameplay, are like Pixar shorts.
The environments have a drippy surrealist style to them to, and the lack of a map, health bar or any HUD at all means you’re not distracted as you explore and solve puzzles.
In some early gameplay footage, I saw how the lighthouse’s main form of interaction comes from its light beam. Not only does this help you seek out pathways and objects, but it can also be focused on the countless skittering creatures. Sometimes this causes creatures to flee, while other times they’ll offer up magical orbs willingly and unwillingly, which open up later areas or bring towering creatures (structures?) to life. In Double Fine fashion, things look weird, too, with melted mountain peaks with more than a dost of Dali.
You don’t have to attack everything, either. During three different gameplay demos, I watched all kinds of creatures hide, run, and just exist in this world where humanity has long since disappeared. Oh there’s briefly a giant flying whale too.
Using the lighthouse’s beam on certain things will leave an twinkling spark behind, meaning that Twig the bird can interact with it. During a later segment, the lighthouse can manipulate time, turning its bird companion back into an egg while a building repairs itself — and frees up a pathway. Twig remains an egg for a while until later, when the lighthouse can fast-forward time. Abilities like this seem location-dependent, rather than a Metroidvania collection of skills built up over the game. At another juncture, the lighthouse walks into a cloud of pink fluffy mist, unlocking the ability to jump and float around levels.
Schafer says the themes of life-changing and metamorphosis will continue to bubble up during Keeper and the lighthouse and bird duo is clearly central to all of it. It reminds me a little of Banjo Kazooie (the latter was a bird) but also Ico; at one point, the seemingly impervious lighthouse loses its footing, but Twig willfully tries to drag their partner to safety. Did Twig even help? Maybe not, but the sentiment was there.
Keeper will launch on Xbox Series S|X and PC on October 17th, including Xbox Game Pass.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/doublefine-keeper-gameplay-gamescom2025-123038715.html?src=rss
SpaceX has successfully launched the Starship for its 10th test flight after it was delayed a couple of times due to weather conditions and other issues. This time, the company was able to achieve its objectives without the vehicle and its booster exploding mid-test. One of those objectives was deploying Starship’s payload for the first time ever. If you’ll recall, Starship exploded during its ascent stage in the company’s seventh and eighth test flights. The vehicle made it to space for its ninth test, but it failed to deploy its fake satellite payload. In June, a Starship vehicle exploded on the ground while the company was preparing it for its 10th flight test.
The company had to use another upper stage, called Ship, for the 10th flight after that explosion. It also incorporated changes into the Ship and its Super Heavy booster, based on what it learned from those previous attempts. For this test, SpaceX intended to conduct several experiments with the booster, such as flipping it and playing with engine configurations as it made its way back down. Due to the experimental nature of this test, SpaceX didn’t try to catch it with the launch tower’s chopstick arms. Instead, it made a controlled descent into the Indian Ocean, where it exploded upon making contact with the water.
Meanwhile, Ship continued flying into space. Around 20 minutes after launch, the upper stage started ejecting eight dummy Starlink satellites into space, before re-lighting one of its engines in flight as part of another test. After that, Ship started making its way back to Earth, where it also splashed down into the Indian Ocean a bit over an hour after launch. “Congratulations to all of our teammates here at SpaceX — it’s been a year,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the livestream, likely pointing out that it’s been a while since the company has had a good test flight. Of course, SpaceX still has a long way to go, including having to figure out how to retrieve the vehicle’s upper stage after a flight in order for the Starship to be fully reusable.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacexs-starship-deploys-its-payload-for-the-first-time-035030373.html?src=rss
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.
Please enjoy — and I’ll see you next week.
The climbing genre is not a monolith — that is to say, there’s plenty of variation in the realm of mountaineering games, from mechanically driven cliff-scaling sims to silly multiplayer survival experiences, but they tend to share the same premise: Reach the peak. You’re miles from civilization, with no vehicles and a limited backpack of equipment, and directly in front of you, there’s a mountain. Ascend.
All you have is your body and mental fortitude against an overwhelming physical challenge, and your step-by-step journey is the story. There’s an obvious symbolism to these games, offering a cliff face as the physical manifestation of impossibility, hopelessness, oppression or fear, alongside a surface-level message about never giving up, trying again and generally hanging in there. Cat poster vibes, but an ever-relevant and poignant lesson nonetheless.
Today, though — particularly after spending time playing the Cairn and Baby Steps demos, and watching PEAK streams — I want to focus on the other half of the climbing-game equation. The part where you fall, over and over and over again. Your grip slips, your leg doesn’t bend that way, your energy depletes, and your body tumbles down the mountain, bouncing off boulders and crashing into trees, leaving you bloody and broken and right back where you started. Or, at the very least, staining your onesie with mud.
I’m learning to appreciate these moments. In mountaineering games, falling tends to generate the most powerful reaction in players, whether that’s immediate laughter (PEAK) or grim frustration (Cairn), and this is an admirable quality. It’s easy to argue that the fall is more important than the climb, because without the lush bed of emotion generated by the constant threat of slipping and tumbling and restarting, reaching the peak wouldn’t feel that special at all. There’s context in the fall, and with that, there comes a sliver of peace.
When you spend all your time climbing, it’s easy to forget that falling is actually the most natural thing you can do. Next time you’re on your way down, try to make peace with the fall.
OK — we’ve gone from motivational cat posters to new-age cult speak, so I’ll get to the point. There are a notable number of mountain-based games in the zeitgeist at the moment and I just wanted to shout them out because they’re all pretty incredible in their own ways.
Cairn is a climbing simulator, endurance test and survival game in one gorgeous package, complete with music by Furi composer The Toxic Avenger, French artist Gildaa, and Martin Stig Andersen, who did the soundtracks for Control, LIMBO and INSIDE. Climb absolutely anywhere, manage your inventory by shaking your backpack, bandage your wounds, forage for food and sleep under the stars. Cairn comes from Furi studio The Game Bakers and it’s due out on November 5 for PlayStation 5 and Steam; the demo is available on both platforms now.
Baby Steps is a different kind of mountain-scaling game, and one could argue that it doesn’t even belong in the same category as something like Cairn, but I believe you’ll find that it does. Baby Steps adheres to the established premise of the climbing genre — reach the peak — and it features a distant mountaintop as the main waypoint for Nate, a lost and lonely man in a gray onesie. Nate is essentially a dude-sized baby learning how to walk, and creators Maxi Boch, Gabe Cuzzillo and Bennett Foddy are infusing his journey with the appropriate amount of hilarity and mechanical intrigue. Baby Steps is published by Devolver Digital and it’s heading to PC and PS5 on September 23, a date that was recently pushed back to avoid the curse of Hollow Knight: Silksong. (More on that below).
PEAK is the thing all the cool kids are playing this summer, and as a fadingly hip not-kid who prefers solo games and familiar FPSes, I can attest it’s entertaining to watch and looks like a lot of fun to play. PEAK is a co-op climbing game with simple 3D models and deceptively challenging mountains to summit, each with four biomes. The map updates each day so there’s a steady stream of fresh climbing content, and the proximity voice chat works exceptionally well. I particularly like that players get to live on as little ghosts after they die. PEAK comes from indie studio Team PEAK and it’s on Steam for $8.
And why not, I’ll shout out some other modern, but not as recent, mountain-based favorites of mine: Jusant, Celeste, GIRP and Journey are all pretty spectacular.
Enjoy the climb — and the fall.
A selection of indie and AA games I’m looking forward to that aren’t Silksong
Baby Steps is the latest game to change its release date in order to get out of the way of Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is coming out on September 4. Team Cherry dropped the release date in a trailer on August 21 and since then, at least eight indie studios have delayed their own games to avoid the Silksong window. It’s lovely to see Silksong have its day in the sun, but personally, I’m more interested in playing Baby Steps in full.
With that said, here’s a sampling of indie and AA games I’m anticipating that aren’t Silksong, in no particular order and right off the top of my head:
Bye Sweet Carole (October 9, 2025)
Keeper (October 17, 2025)
Reanimal (TBA)
Little Nightmares III (October 9, 2025)
Please, Watch the Artwork (2025)
Building Relationships (2025)
Mixtape (2025)
Crisol: Theater of Idols (2025)
UNBEATABLE (November 6, 2025)
Big Walk (2026)
Grave Seasons (2026)
Petal Runner (2026)
Hades 2 (live in early access, 1.0 imminent)
Possessor(s) (2025)
Neverway (2026)
Denshattack! (2026)
Absolum (October 9, 2025)
Skate Story (2025)
Cronos: The New Dawn (September 5, 2025)
Lumines Arise (November 11, 2025)
Relooted (TBA)
Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School (2026)
Blighted (2026)
And obviously, Baby Steps (September 23, 2025) and Cairn (November 5, 2025).
Electronic Arts has revived the Skate series after 15 years, and the (very youthfully styled) skate. is primed to hit early access on September 16 across PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The new skate. is a shift for the series: It’s a free, online, open-world experience with microtransactions (but nothing in the pay-to-win realm, according to EA). The early access version will be free, too, of course.
The scariest part of Silent Hill f might be its mental health awareness
You’ll find this one alongside Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata in my AAA-inclusive list of games I’m most looking forward to, and Engadget UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith’s preview from Gamescom is only making me more stoked on it. Silent Hill f is set in a remote village in 1960s Japan and stars a schoolgirl named Hinako. Here’s a bit of Mat’s take after a two-hour demo, which involved a scarecrow confrontation and marionette attacks:
The latest Silent Hill still has jumpscares, like you’d expect from the horror series, but the setting and game systems are more focused on tension, putting both Hinako and the player under constant duress. A typical health meter is joined by a sanity gauge and even your weapons have limited durability, so you’re forced to pick your fights.
… The entire experience is drenched in atmosphere, supported by this new sanity system — is there anything more 2025 than a mental health gauge? The constant feeling of isolation (“Where is everyone?”) and unanswered questions made the demo a persuasive introduction to the game.
Silent Hill f is due out on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 25, 2025.
OVERWATCH 2 STADIUM GET’S ITS BIGGEST UDPATE EVER!
Remember when I said I liked playing familiar FPSes? Overwatch 2 is my kind of decompression. With season 18, Blizzard is changing how hero progression is displayed, adding color-coded borders and top-hero cards to the character-selection process. The aim is to make it clearer how skilled you are with any given character, and also share this information with teammates and enemies in a way that won’t enable trolling during the ban phase. The progression 2.0 developer notes are here, if you’re interested. Season 18 also brings keyboard and mouse support to consoles, but those players will be thrown into the PC matchmaking pool, and introduces the water-bending support hero Wuyang.
Overwatch 2 Season 18 went live today, August 26. My colleague and fellow Overwatch 2 player Kris Holt spotted two egregious copy errors in the new season’s welcome screen, captured for posterity below:
Overwatch 2 Season 18’s welcome screen could’ve used a copy editor.
Bungie’s longtime leader has left the studio and the Destiny community couldn’t be happier. Pete Parsons has taken a lot of heat for the stale state of the company’s shooter (and the size of his car collection), but it’s more likely the whole art theft, bungled launch and indefinite delay of Marathon led to his departure. New CEO Justin Truman, who at one point ran Destiny 2 and most recently was the company’s “chief development officer,” has his work cut out to win back fans.
Additional reading
Kris Holt’s indie game roundup
Have a tip for Jessica? You can reach her by email, Bluesky or send a message to @jesscon.96 to chat confidentially on Signal.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-weekly-climbing-games-are-so-hot-right-now-010748663.html?src=rss
This week, Samsung introduced a new addition to its tablet lineup with the Tab S10 Lite. It will be available on September 4 and will cost $349. The Lite will be the least expensive of Samsung’s current tablet generation; the S10 FE has a starting cost of $500 while costs go as high as $980 for the S10 Ultra.
The Tab S10 Lite is 10.9 inches, and it comes in gray, silver or a coral red. Its screen has a 90Hz refresh rate and a maximum brightness of 600 nits. Models can have 6GB memory with 128GB of storage or 8GB and 256GB of memory and storage, respectively. The tablet comes with a 8MP camera in the rear and a 5MP one in front. It will be sold with the S Pen, which we enjoyed in our review of the Tab S9 Ultra. And of course, AI will be front and center in the tablet experience, with a dedicated Galaxy AI button and software features like Circle to Search and Handwriting Assist.
The Tab S9 remains our favorite Android tablet, so we’ll have to see how well the S10 Lite stacks up against the A16 iPad, which is our current budget pick for tablets.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/samsung-announces-the-tab-s10-lite-a-349-tablet-with-an-s-pen-225823197.html?src=rss
Huntr/x has indeed shown us how it’s done-done-done. KPop Demon Hunters is now the queen it was meant to be, taking the crown as the most-watched title on Netflix. The charming animated film has racking up 236 million views since its debut on June 20.
The movie is about exactly what it says on the tin: a trio of k-pop idols secretly protect the human world from demons. But it became a smash hit this summer thanks to its unexpectedly insightful themes and unbelievably catchy soundtrack. In fact, the music is so good that the movie recently had four different tracks in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 chart at the same time; no other movie soundtrack has done that before.
Netflix even parlayed the popularity of KPop Demon Hunters into a limited theatrical run, offering fans a chance to sing along with the film last weekend. Although the streaming service hasn’t shared any figures from the theater singalong, Variety reported that based on other studios’ projections, Netflix made an estimated $18 to $20 million over the two days of showings.
The previous holder of most-watched on Netflix was heist flick Red Notice, which has generated 231 million views since 2021. Considering KPop Demon Hunters surpassed several years’ worth of views in a matter of months, that’s one heck of a takedown.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/kpop-demon-hunters-is-netflixs-most-watched-movie-of-all-time-215857627.html?src=rss
