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Russia’s Anti-Satellite Plan: Work in Progress?

Taking LEO Off the Board: Russian Thinking About Anti-Satellite Warfare is authored by Aaron Stein, President of the Foreign Policy ResearchΒ Institute (FPRI). β€œThe Soviet Union and Russia have invested in anti-satellite weapons to ensure that their nuclear deterrent remains credible. For both the Soviet Union and Russia, the destruction of American satellites was (and is) […]
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Is this $450 laptop from an unknown brand too good to be true?

A Chuwi UniBook laptop, facing away from the camera to show its lid. It’s sitting on a glss table admist a plush meeting space filled with colorful couches and chairs.
Cute name, especially if it were a wookiee. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Finding a good laptop under $500 was hard enough before RAMageddon. They nearly always had cheap hardware and underpowered, often outdated chips. That's what made the MacBook Neo so disruptive: It offered great build quality and good-enough performance starting at $599. Windows laptops couldn't touch it. Even though it's gone up to $699, it's still the laptop to beat.

So when little-known Chinese brand Chuwi announced a $450 Windows laptop with an aluminum build and a brand-new Intel Wildcat Lake processor, it sounded too good to be true.

It is.

Chuwi UniBook

Score: 3

ProsCons
  • It's $450
  • Tons of ports for a small laptop (though none are very …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Nitecore’s latest power bank is the lightest and most compact yet

The Nitecore NB10000 Gen 4 power bank is a great option for endurance athletes and backpackers. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

There's two things you should know about me, your intrepid reviewer: I hate the feature creep associated with modern power banks, and I love shaving grams off the gear I carry when backpacking, bikepacking, and trail running. So imagine my delight when Nitecore released a new generation of its ultralight NB10000 battery. After a few weeks with it I can confidently say: Haribo be damned!

The $83.95 NB10000 Gen 4 weighs just 146 grams, according to my scale, and measures 1.45 x 11.6 x 4.68cm (0.57 x 4.57 x 1.84 inches), according to Nitecore's spec sheet. That makes it the lightest and most compact 10,000mAh power bank I can find. Even when …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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EA Sports Tailors Madden NFL 27 for Apple Arcade

EA Sports has released Madden NFL 27 Arcade Edition, a version of the popular football simulation franchise that Apple Arcade subscribers can play on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. It’s a big release built specifically to take advantage of Apple hardware, allowing players to play the game on a wide variety of hardware.

I was struck by how easy it is to pick up and play the game whether you’re a diehard NFL fan or not. I don’t follow football closely, but I was able to get the hang of the game and have fun right away, knocking out a Quick Play match when I had a few minutes to spare.

Quick Play tightly limits the overall time it takes to complete a matchup, but it doesn’t sacrifice depth in the process. There are long lists of plays you can run, including suggested plays, play types, formations, and recents, as well as a wide variety of statistics. And after a big play, you can replay it with total control over the camera angle, too.

However, if you want to go really deep, the game’s Franchise Mode lets you play a full NFL season, managing your team all the way through the playoffs. You can also draft your dream team from the game’s huge catalog of real-world NFL stars. Plus, during the real-world NFL season, player attributes shift based on their actual performance.

Madden NFL 27 also looks terrific. The 120Hz playback is smooth on the iPhone, where I spent most of my time with the game, and even nicer on a bigger screen like my 14” M4 Max MacBook Pro, making for an immersive experience.

What impresses me most about Madden NFL 27, though, is how well it makes use of the Apple hardware and technologies at its disposal. Too often, those sorts of details get left behind when a big release is published on Apple platforms.

To its credit, EA has done an excellent job adapting Madden NFL 27 for Apple Arcade subscribers. You can play across every device mentioned above, leaving off on one device and picking up on another seamlessly because saves sync across devices. Every device supports game controllers and touch where applicable, and those devices with 120Hz displays support that, too.

Madden NFL 27 Arcade Edition is available now on the App Store as part of an Apple Arcade subscription. The game is debuting on other platforms next week.

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Book Review: Meet the Neighbors – Life on Mars and How to Find It

Meet the Neighbors – Life on Mars and How to Find It by Steven A. Benner;Β Allen Lane, (an imprint of Penguin Books); July 2026; 416 pages (Hardcover); $40.99 (Amazon). Talk about a β€œcold case” – nothing like dealing with life on Mars where the temperature can drop like a rock to roughly – 89Β°C at […]
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HP’s HyperX Omen 15 isn’t quite the budget-friendly gaming laptop its predecessor was

A HyperX Omen 15 gaming laptop on a wood table, in front of a splash of cyan colored light.
Tough sell. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

The HP HyperX Omen 15, which I first saw at CES, replaces the HP Victus 15, a longtime bestselling budget gaming laptop. The Victus cost just $800, or less when on sale, and was a good entry point to decent laptop gaming.

The Omen 15 has nice little upgrades over the Victus. Its RTX 5050 Laptop GPU can play 2026's latest games, albeit on low-ish settings. But it's also got a brighter 16:10 aspect ratio display with higher refresh rate, and a 1080p webcam to make it a little better for non-gaming stuff.

I'd call it a working-class gaming laptop, but thanks to RAMageddon, the Omen 15 starts at $1,200 - a far cry from the $800 that made its …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Review: Yes, we're still arguing about Nolan's The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since the first casting and design reveals, igniting afresh with each new trailer. The film has garnered plenty of well-deserved accolades (and earnings) since its release, and yet somehow the debates rage on between classicists and the general public alikeβ€”all this over an adaptation of an epic poem that's been around since roughly the 8th century BCE.

My take: the IMAX scale might be epic, but Nolan gives the story an intimate feel, weaving a captivating, nearly three-hour cinematic spell. While the magic slowly starts to dissipate once one leaves the theater, the powerful imagery will resonate for days. And the film gave me, personally, a fresh perspective on the central character of Odysseus.

(Spoilers below.)

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