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This year’s Amazon Prime Day is coming soon, so it’s a good time to start thinking about the things you’ll want to look for once the deal wave hits. Everything from gadgets to clothes to household necessities will be on sale during the event as part of the Prime Day deals, and if you’re a Prime member, you’ll have access to all of the discounts. Engadget will be surfacing all of the best tech deals we can find, but there are some important things to know ahead of time so you can get exactly what you want out of this year’s Prime Day.

When is Prime Day 2025?

Amazon Prime Day 2025 will be back this year sometime in July, but the official dates have not been released yet.

What is Prime Day?

Prime Day is Amazon’s members-only shopping event, which means you’ll have to be a Prime subscriber on Prime Day to take advantage of most of the savings. Amazon still offers a 30-day free trial to new Prime subscribers, so you can start your free trial closer to July and participate in the event.

How often is Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day typically comes around annually in July. In the last few years, Amazon has also had its “Big Deal Days” in October, which is effectively a second Prime Day and the unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping season.

How does Prime Day work?

Prime subscribers can go to Amazon’s site on Prime Day to see all of the exclusive deals they have access to. Prime subscribers do not have to do anything additional to get Prime Day sales: the discounts you see on product pages will show up in your cart automatically. If you’re not a Prime subscriber and you go to Amazon to shop on Prime Day, you’ll likely see tons of items on sale but only “with Prime;” those discounts will not be available to those who are not active Prime subscribers.

If you don’t pay for Prime and have no intention of doing so, you should still check out Amazon on Prime Day for sales that are available to all shoppers — there are always a few of them. Plus, it’s very likely that other retailers like Target and Best Buy will have their own competing Prime Day sales during that time frame, too.

How to prep for Prime Day

First, make a list. It’s best to go into Amazon Prime Day as prepared as possible; that means knowing exactly what you want so you stay focused and avoid distractions. Make note of the most important items you want to pick up on Prime Day ahead of time. You can either do this the old-fashioned way on a sticky note, or you can use Amazon’s wish list feature. For the latter, add the items you want to buy on Prime Day to your wish list (or, even better, make a dedicated wishlist with only your Prime Day desirables) and return to that list during the shopping event. Not only will you have everything you want all in one place, but you’ll also be able to see which of those items are cheaper on Prime Day than they were when you originally added them to your list.

Second, use a price tracker. Sites like CamelCamelCamel and Keepa let you monitor the price of specific items on Amazon. You can check out price history charts and you can make your own price-drop alerts, receiving emails when something you want gets a discount. Both CamelCamelCamel and Keepa also have some browser extensions you can download so you don’t have to navigate away from an Amazon product page to check its price history.

Amazon Prime Day deals

Amazon Prime Day typically lasts a couple of days, but for the past few years, the company has started pushing out deals well before the event actually kicks off. We anticipate the same happening this year, with early Prime Day deals kicking off possibly as soon as Amazon officially announces the dates of Prime Day 2025.

While we wouldn’t call the following sales “early Prime Day deals” just yet, they do represent some of the best deals you can get on Amazon right now as we wait for the full details of Prime Day to be revealed. We’ll update this list as prices change and as we find even more of the best Amazon deals you can get.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/amazon-prime-day-2025-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-annual-july-sales-event-120028400.html?src=rss 

The Starship super heavy-lift launch vehicle blasted off from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas for its ninth test flight on Tuesday, 7:37 PM Eastern time. It was the first Starship flight that reused a Super Heavy booster, which was also used for the vehicle’s seventh test flight. During the vehicle’s seventh and eighth flights, its second stage, or the Starship spacecraft itself, exploded during ascent. This time, the stage (also known as the “Ship”) completed its ascent burn and even reached space, but it was one victory in a test flight with mixed results.

SpaceX’s Starbase launch tower caught the Super Heavy booster after it flew back with its “chopstick” arms during the two previous flights. For this one, the company conducted tests with the booster it didn’t do before, such as making it fly at a higher angle during its descent. Doing so increases the atmospheric drag on the booster, slowing it down as it descends so that it requires less propellant. As such, the company had decided to let the booster splash down into the ocean, as the testing would make it more difficult for the Starbase chopstick arms to catch it. SpaceX lost contact with the Super Heavy shortly after it started its landing burn, however, and it experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” six minutes after launch. 

Meanwhile, the Ship stage was able to take on a suborbital trajectory and was supposed to deploy eight Starlink simulator satellites while it was in space. It was ultimately unable to deploy the simulator satellites, because its payload bay door got stuck and wouldn’t open. The Ship also encountered an attitude control error that prevented it from getting into the position it needed to take for reentry. It started to tumble due to a leak that caused loss of main tank pressure, before SpaceX lost contact with it 46 minutes into the flight. While a controlled splashdown was impossible to achieve, the company still expects Ship’s debris to fall within the planned hazard area in the Indian Ocean. 

SpaceX will not be getting all the data it was hoping to get from this flight, but Elon Musk said there’s still a “lot of good data to review.” He also said that the company will be flying the Starship over the next three flights once every three to four weeks. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacexs-ninth-starship-test-flight-reaches-space-but-fails-to-deploy-fake-satellites-120057474.html?src=rss 

On June 5, which is also the Switch 2’s launch day, Nintendo is rolling out new features for N64 games on Switch Online. If you just want to play to relax and not worry about in-game lives, the ability to rewind will perhaps sound like the most useful among the upcoming features. It will let you, well, rewind the game if you make a mistake so you can try again from that point. Failed to a get a birdie on Mario Golf? No problem. Just access the feature and choose from the panels at the bottom that show up to choose which point you’d like to start from again. That said, the function will only be accessible on the Switch 2. 

Another new feature coming to N64 games is the CRT filter. Yes, it will give your game that old CRT TV look by putting a pixelated texture on top of it. If you’ve originally played N64 titles on old TVs, it could be a fantastic throwback to your youth. Like the rewind function, though, the option will be exclusively available on the Switch 2. It’s not quite clear why it won’t be rolling out on Switch consoles, as well. If you’re not getting the new console, the only update you’re getting on June 5 is the ability to check what each controller button does on the game you’re playing. You can then change what each button does to make the controls easier for you. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/switch-2-will-add-a-rewind-function-to-its-online-n64-games-121506171.html?src=rss 

Mozilla’s Firefox has joined Chrome, Edge and other browsers in offering AI-powered overviews, but this time with a twist. The latest version lets you use a keyboard shortcut to open a pop-up that previews a link’s contents when you hover over it from any web page. It’s a new way that AI is being integrated into browsers that may help users but hurt publishers. 

To try the new feature you need the latest Firefox release channel version 139.0. Within the settings under “Firefox Labs,” simply turn on Link Previews. “After enabling, use the Alt+Shift keyboard shortcut when hovering over a link to see the previews in action,” Mozilla writes. 

Once turned on, you can hover your mouse over a link on any webpage and a vertical window will pop up showing an image on top, the publisher’s link and a quick summary. Below that are AI-generated “key points” that provide further information. Mozilla previously said that it uses the SmolLM2-360M language model from Hugging Face, on-device with Reader’s View content to ensure privacy. 

Link Previews first came along last month in beta but is now widely available in some regions. Like Google’s AI previews, it could risk harming publishers by reducing traffic (which is likely why neither of those features are available in France where I live). It’s also not clear if Firefox is paying publishers to use their information in AI-powered summaries. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-war-on-links-escalates-with-firefoxs-experimental-ai-previews-123059735.html?src=rss 

Anthropic is continuing to trickle down features to its free users. The latest one to make the leap out of subscriber-only mode is web search, which the company introduced to its AI chatbot Claude in March. According to Anthropic, connecting Claude to the web allows it to deliver more accurate responses based on the most up-to-date information available online. This feature is available to all Claude users starting today.

In addition, Anthropic has begun beta tests for voice mode on its mobile apps. This option lets users interact with Claude in natural conversations in an expansion of the platform’s existing dictation tools. There will be five voice options available to assign to Claude, and the AI assistant can provide full transcripts and voice mode summaries after a conversation.

May has been a busy month for Anthropic, which just launched two new models last week. Opus 4 is a powerful coding-focused system that can use multiple tools in parallel and can run for several hours at a time, while Sonnet 4 is a hybrid reasoning model designed to move between quick queries and more complex ones. The current beta testing of voice mode will default to Sonnet 4.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-brings-web-search-to-free-claude-users-224222689.html?src=rss 

Apple has bought a game studio for the first time. Digital Trends reported on Tuesday that the company has scooped up RAC7. The two-person team is behind the Apple Arcade hit Sneaky Sasquatch.

For years, some investors have hoped Apple would apply its full clout to the gaming industry. Although recent years have seen the launches of Apple Arcade and Game Mode for Macs, there’s still untapped potential. Another piece of news on Tuesday makes it easier to speculate that something is brewing. Bloomberg reported that the company will launch a revamped gaming app at WWDC. The new app is said to replace the oft-forgotten Game Center.

However, Giovanni Colantonio of Digital Trends suggests the acquisition isn’t necessarily a sign of what’s to come. He notes that Apple described the RAC7 purchase as a unique situation to help the small studio grow. “We will continue to deliver a great experience for Apple Arcade players with hundreds of games from many of the best game developers in the world,” Apple told the publication.

Sneaky Sasquatch was a launch title for Apple Arcade in 2019. Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar described it as an example of how the service can let developers “cut loose and get weird.” And weird, it is. (Delightfully so!) You play as the mythic Bigfoot, tiptoeing around a forest. What starts as a quirky stealth game takes even stranger turns. As you progress, you’ll learn to drive cars, disguise yourself as a human and hit the slopes.

Over five years later, the quirky title is still one of Apple Arcade’s tentpole games. It sits alongside favorites like Katamari Damacy Rolling Live, Skate City: New York and Threes! And we can’t forget one of Engadget’s all-time favorite games, Balatro. The “almost perfect” port of the deck-building game hit the service last year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/apple-buys-the-maker-of-sneaky-sasquatch-210305065.html?src=rss 

European regulators are investigating Pornhub. On Monday, the European Commission (EC) accused the platform of not doing enough to block underage access. Also included in the investigation are Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos.

The EC suspects the porn sites have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), which includes child safety measures. Specifically, it accused the platforms of lacking age restriction tools. All four sites let EU users watch content after clicking a single button to confirm they’re over 18.

In a statement to Engadget, Pornhub said it’s “fully committed” to the online safety of minors. “Our sites are fully RTA compliant as rated by the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP), and are strictly reserved for those of legal age only,” the company said. It added that it believes device-level verification, rather than on the website, is “the real solution.”

“Children should not have access to pornographic content,” EC spokesperson Thomas Regnier said at a press conference (via The Guardian). “This is why today the commission has opened [the] investigations.”

Next, regulators will carry out an in-depth probe. If the companies are found to be in violation, they could face fines of up to six percent of their global annual turnover. However, the EC could also accept remedies from the companies.

The DSA allows the commission to regulate online platforms with over 45 million users. Those missing that mark fall under the jurisdiction of the EU’s 27 member states. On that note, the commission said Stripchat no longer meets that threshold. Moving forward, it will be regulated by Cyprus, where its parent company operates. However, the new designation doesn’t take effect for four months, so it remains part of the probe.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/eu-regulators-are-investigating-pornhub-and-three-other-sites-194234570.html?src=rss