Now that Valve has finally launched its entire 2026 hardware lineup - the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and today's Steam Frame - are we any closer to a next-gen Steam Deck handheld? Valve isn't saying so yet. The company is figuring out "how and when we can deliver something like that," Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais now tells IGN.
Valve has been clear for years that 1) a Steam Deck 2 will indeed happen, and 2) it's not coming until Valve finds the right chip. The original Steam Deck worked because it delivered the right combination of price, performance, and battery life, and Valve has repeatedly said it won't sacrifice effici …
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX head Elon Musk loosely agreed over the weekend to slow down AI development, skeptics spotted an ulterior motive immediately. The AI titans had declared that their aim was to "pace the frontier," signing on at least partially to a proposal for embedding third-party auditors, regulating domestic labs, and reaching a global slowdown agreement. Their critics, however, argued they simply wanted to stop would-be competitors, kneecap the open-source movement, and avoid real legal safeguards - some dubbed it an outright "cartel."
Apple Intelligence for Home brings AI-powered video summaries to HomeKit Secure Video, so you can get short text descriptions of who and what compatible security cameras saw, along with the clip. It also adds a new video search feature and the ability to stitch footage from multiple cameras into one clip, making it easier to keep an eye on what's happening around your home without scrolling through footage.
Dario Amodei kicked off a flood of statements over the past few days about AI safety by publishing a long essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier" detailing why AI development should be slowed down. Other AI leaders and politicians are speaking out in favor of or opposing his points, and we've compiled some of them here.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
Amodei's Saturday morning essay outlined three steps for pacing AI development: embedded third-party evaluators that can verify if a company is adhering to safety practices and commitments and report incidents, coordination between frontier AI companies in democratic countries on standards and li …
The Environmental Protection Agency announced its plans today to kill any remaining standards on how much greenhouse gas pollution power plants are allowed to emit in the US. The move will only make electricity dirtier as AI, electric vehicles, and a revival of domestic manufacturing drive up power demand.
The EPA's proposal today is a major escalation of President Donald Trump's efforts to promote fossil fuels while making it easier to build out energy-hungry data centers. Environmental and consumer advocates, meanwhile, are fighting back - arguing that Trump's deregulation spree comes with higher costs for the environment, public health, …
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on September 2, 2026. (Photo by Matt RAMEY / AFP via Getty Images) | AFP via Getty Images
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took a call from President Trump on Monday while onstage at the All-In Podcast's All-In Summit. It's not the first time Huang has taken a call from the president during work, but this time he put Trump on speakerphone before a big crowd.
During the call, the president launched into his take on recent fears about AI development, which he called a "hoax," and told the crowd that "the robots will not be taking over."
It's already a frothy week for AI news. The call with the president followed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's long essay published this weekend titled "We Must Pace the Frontier" where he argued for slowing …
The Steam Frame headset is here, and it may not surprise you: it was supposed to cost less than $1,059. "We set out to come out with a device that would have been far more affordable, but the global RAM market, the global storage market have impacted us the same way they've impacted everybody," Valve developer Jeremy Selan told the BBC. "We fought hard to get it even to this price."
I haven't yet seen Valve say whether it's selling the Steam Frame at cost, like the company confirmed it was doing with the $1,049 Steam Machine living room PC. But Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais hinted maybe so in an interview with Tom's Hardware: "there' …
Super Mario Odyssey is among the discounted games. | Image: Nintendo
As promised, Nintendo has marked down a wide variety of Switch games and accessories at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, as well as its own digital storefront. Its “Customer Appreciation” sale is happening because of tariff-related refunds it received from the US government, and it ends on September 26th at 8:59 PM PT.
Nintendo games and accessories tend to stick close to their list price, so it’s nice to have some big discounts, especially this far ahead of the holiday season. Some of the company’s best titles for the original Switch are significantly marked down, with a few Switch 2 titles thrown in, too. The most notable inclusions include the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe digital bundle with the Booster Course pass for just under $60 (Amazon, Nintendo), The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for $49 (Amazon, Nintendo, Best Buy), and Animal Crossing: New Horizons with the DLC for $60 (Nintendo). The Switch 2 Editions aren’t currently discounted, but upgrade packs are fairly affordable, costing $9.99 for the Tears of the Kingdom (Amazon) or $4.99 for Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Amazon).
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Physical)
Tears of the Kingdom is the latest mainline installment in the Zelda franchise. The storyline and gameplay are similar to Breath of the Wild’s, but enough has changed to make Link’s return to Hyrule plenty special. Read our review.
The Alarmo takes dozens of characters and scenes from classic Nintendo franchises and places them in a charming alarm clock that’s designed to help you sleep and wake. It uses motion sensors to detect whether you’re still in bed and gets more aggressive the longer you sleep in.
The Switch Pro released alongside the Switch console in 2017, and it’s a tough controller to beat. It offers an unmatched set of features (HD rumble, motion controls, NFC), and it’s one of the most comfortable Switch controllers out there.
Metroid Prime 4 is still a first-person adventure game like prior entries in the series, but this time around, bounty hunter Samus Aran is armed with a motorcycle and a slate of psychic powers. Not all of the new gameplay elements work, but Beyond is a fitting follow-up to what came before, with a lore-heavy story, great combat, and plenty of eerie exploration.
Explore the mysteries of an abandoned civilization in this 3D platformer for the Nintendo Switch. It’s still a Kirby game, with a delightful tone that had us smiling the whole way through. Read our review.
Super Mario Odyssey is one of the crowning achievements of the original Switch thanks to its tight platforming, ingenious level design and a game mechanic that lets you control certain enemies and parts of the environment. There are still bosses to battle and coins to collect, but Odyssey feels like a breath of fresh air.
Splatoon 3 is proof that Nintendo isn’t done showing off its take on an online shooter—with paint instead of bullets, of course. The game looks great, and has a single player mode that fills out the series’ lore through scrapbook pages you find while navigating and shooting your way through each level. Online multiplayer remains Splatoon’s 3’s big draw, so be prepared to square off against fellow squid kids. Read our review.
If you want an idea of what’s next in film, the Toronto International Film Festival is a good place to start. Every year TIFF features a huge range of features from around the world, and often some of them go on to be huge hits or awards contenders; the 2025 edition, for instance, included the likes of both Hamnet and Obsession.
Covering a sprawling festival like TIFF solo is next to impossible, so I do my best to see as much as I can, and then write about everything with bite-sized reviews published each day. For 2026, that means exciting upcoming films like Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and a gigantic Elon Musk documentary, and even a few streaming series, like Crystal Lake and Carrie.
You can keep up with my thoughts on everything I watch right here.
Apple released macOS 27 Golden Gateon Monday, which brings the new Siri AI assistant, Liquid Glass improvements, improved performance, and more. The update is compatible with all Macs with Apple Silicon, but not Intel Macs - Apple released its final big update for Intel-based Macs last year with macOS Tahoe.
Siri AI is arguably the biggest feature in macOS 27, and it allows you to ask questions, search through things involving your personal context like photos and emails, and take actions in apps such as Messages and Reminders. There's a new dedicated Siri app that keeps an archive of your chats for easier reference. However, Siri AI will …
Marvel's mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio's biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tariq). In retrospect, though, the disappointing demise of Blade might not be such a bad thing, because Tariq and Ali have collaborated on something much more interesting than a superhero reboot: the powerful hitman thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
That was one of five movies I was able to cram into a very hectic third day at the Toronto International Film Festival (you can see my previous re …
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on cars, data privacy, and autonomous vehicles, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepbackhere.
How it started
Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission issued an unprecedented penalty against General Motors: a five-year ban on selling customer data to consumer reporting agencies and third-party data brokers.
For years, GM had been collecting all sorts of data on its customers - such as how often they sped or whether they drove at night - and selling it to brok …
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 143, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, new tech season is here, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I've been devouring every iPhone Duo video I can find, clicking on the wonderful websites nominated for this year's Tiny Awards, catching up on the excellent Onimusha: Way of the Sword, reading Wildwoodahead of the upcoming movie, watching the new Taskmaster series, coming to grips with Link's new look in the Ocarina of Time remake, and fixing the flat tire on my toddler's stroller. I'm very proud of that …
In May, hundreds of malicious and spam packages were uploaded to RubyGems, causing a serious disruption for the host. Now independent researchers have said that a swarm of OpenAI agents were responsible for the attack. Not only that, but the AI tried to steal users' API keys.
At the time, RubyGems described it as a "major malicious attack" and shut down signups for four days as it tried to mitigate the damage and collect data. Researchers said that the contents of the packages that brought RubyGems to its knees were clearly authored by an LLM, and that the agents submitting those packages self-identified as being from OpenAI. They said the …
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that there would be no OpenAI IPO in 2026 during an interview with Fortune. Over the course of 45 minutes, Altman discussed a variety of subjects including the Hugging Face hacking incident, recursive self-improvement, and the possibility of building an AI that was beyond human control. On the latter, he said it was "absolutely" possible, but vowed to take actions to prevent that from happening, even if it meant pausing training, adding that "there are risks we should not be able to incur on behalf of humanity."
"We're not rushing into an IPO. I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, th …
Blizzard originally tried to bring the StarCraft universe to the world of 3D shooters way back in 2002 with StarCraft: Ghost. It sat in development hell for years until Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that it had been canceled in 2014. Now Blizzard is giving it another go with the simply titled StarCraft. Dan Hay, a VP at Blizzard, took the stage at BlizzCon today to reveal that after more than a decade of lying dormant, StarCraft would be returning in 2030. But, rather than another top-down real-time strategy installment, the new title would be an open-world shooter.
He then showed off a cinematic trailer for the title that fo …
Sylvan Esso preparing to attend a frutiger aero renfaire.
Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, better known as Sylvan Esso, have been bringing their low-key electro-pop to the masses since 2014, bursting onto the scene with their self-titled debut album and the single "Hey Mami." Over the years, they've put out a number of excellent records, dabbling in dustier, more fragile textures on Free Love, going dancier and glitchier on No Rules Sandy. The two are constantly pushing at the edges of their sound while retaining the core of what makes a Sylvan Esso record sound like a Sylvan Esso record.
Their new album Ow ∞, released this past Friday, represents perhaps the boldest reinvention of their sound, how …
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the time has come to slow down AI development and will give third-party evaluators like METR access to its models to help ensure its "adherence to safety practices and commitments." In a winding essay, Amodei proposed a three-step plan to "pace the frontier" - jargon that simply means to slow the pace of training and development to give companies time to build safeguards and regulators to evaluate models.
Amodei says that giving external evaluators wide-ranging access is just the first step, and one it is taking now unilaterally. Step two would involve the industry coming together as a whole, likely with gove …
Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG's TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that "Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work."
LG released a statement in which it claims that its "TVs do not continuously record or transmit users' conversations," and that wake-word detection is all processed locally. However, the word "continuously" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV keeping extensive l …
President Donald Trump is weakening environmental regulations in the name of speeding up the construction of AI data centers, raising health risks for Americans, a cadre of former EPA officials said this week in a briefing and new report. They are urging - perhaps futilely - the president to adopt a "Data Center Health Protection Pledge" to signal that the administration is taking the environmental threat seriously.
Login
