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Valve's living-room return to PC gaming landed as a compact, SteamOS-powered cube that promises a console‑style plug‑and‑play experience with desktop-class silicon — a six‑core Zen 4 CPU, 16 GB DDR5, and a semi‑custom RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units and 8 GB of GDDR6 — engineered to hit 4K/60 with upscaling and to occupy the space between a console and a small form‑factor PC. Background / Overview Valve first tried to place PCs under the TV with the original Steam Machine experiments in the...

Valve’s surprise hardware salvo landed with a pragmatic twist: the Steam Frame, a Snapdragon-powered, standalone SteamOS VR headset that also runs traditional Steam games and streams PC titles — and in doing so Valve has quietly opened a path for Arm-based SteamOS devices that could reshape the handheld gaming landscape. The Steam Frame’s use of a 4nm Snapdragon SoC, 16 GB of unified RAM, and a SteamOS build that includes an Arm translation/emulation layer marks the first time Valve has...

Valve’s new Steam Machine is being presented as a compact, living‑room‑friendly way to run your Steam library — built and sold by Valve, powered by SteamOS and Proton, and explicitly positioned as a reference device that Valve hopes will invite other companies, modders, and everyday PC builders to “have a crack” at shipping their own SteamOS machines. Background / Overview Valve’s hardware strategy since the Steam Deck has shifted from one‑off experiments toward a small family of devices...

Valve’s new Steam Machine promises console‑style convenience with PC performance, but the one‑line truth for multiplayer fans is blunt: the Steam Machine will inherit the Steam Deck’s anti‑cheat problem unless publishers, anti‑cheat vendors and Valve change course — and right now the technical and business incentives make that unlikely to disappear soon. Background The modern SteamOS ecosystem is built on two complementary pillars: the Linux kernel that underpins the OS, and Proton, Valve’s...

Which? has quietly promoted a new joint highest‑scoring Windows laptop in its lab, and the headline is simple: one of the best Windows machines they’ve ever tested manages to be genuinely ultraportable without surrendering the battery life or everyday performance most buyers want. The model is described as having a footprint smaller than an A4 sheet of paper, a svelte 13 mm profile, a 2‑in‑1 touchscreen design and roughly 15 hours of video‑playback or mixed‑use endurance — plus a fast‑charge...

Microsoft's plan to make Windows “agentic” — where AI agents run on the PC, connect to apps, and take multi‑step actions for users — has moved from roadmap to platform-level engineering, and that pivot is already reshaping developer tooling, hardware requirements, and the user experience debate around Windows 11. Background / Overview Microsoft announced native support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and a refreshed AI stack for Windows at recent developer events, describing an ambition...

OpenAI’s latest patch to its flagship generative AI arrives with a clear promise: make ChatGPT feel smarter and friendlier while keeping the heavy reasoning where it belongs. The company quietly rolled out GPT‑5.1, splitting the update into two sibling models — GPT‑5.1 Instant (for warm, fast conversation) and GPT‑5.1 Thinking (for deeper, multi‑step reasoning) — and paired the technical refresh with a new set of conversational presets to let users shape tone more easily. This update is...

Meta has quietly yanked the native Windows 11 WhatsApp client and replaced it with a WebView2-wrapped instance of the web app, a change that is already rolling out and which — according to multiple independent tests and community reports — produces markedly higher RAM usage, weaker Windows integration, and a notably different user experience than the native WinUI/UWP client it replaces. Background WhatsApp’s Windows history has been a series of technical pivots. The app began life as a web...

For users who split their days between spreadsheets, photo edits, and late-night matches, the combination of AMD Ryzen processors and Windows 11 is increasingly being marketed — and verified — as the smarter way to play, create, and work, blending sustained battery life, on-device AI, and a set of operating‑system optimizations that can materially change real‑world performance. Background: why this pairing matters right now Over the last 18 months the PC ecosystem has shifted from a...

Samsung’s Vision AI Companion arrives on the TV to shift the device from a passive screen to an active, conversational household hub that answers questions, surfaces recommendations, and integrates multiple AI agents — all without the need to pick up a phone or toggle through menus. Overview: what Samsung just launched and why it matters Samsung unveiled Vision AI Companion (VAC) at IFA 2025 and has begun rolling the feature out across its 2025 TV and smart monitor lineup as a software...

The Society of Radiographers has quietly but deliberately reshaped its privacy and technology policy to govern staff use of artificial intelligence, introduce a new learning management system, and formalise a cautious — yet progressive — approach to digital tools that touch member data. The changes make three things clear: staff must use approved AI tools (Microsoft Copilot is named as an example), personal data entered into AI systems must be minimized and human‑checked, and a new online...

I fed the same detailed family prompt to five popular AI chatbots and, after comparing itineraries, packing lists, booking advice and line‑item budgets, one clear runner-up emerged: Claude—not because it booked my Finnair Avios seat for me, but because it stitched together the most practical, verifiable, and family‑friendly plan from a short free session. Background Artificial intelligence is no longer a curiosity for travel planning; it's a practical drafting tool for millions of travelers...

Microsoft has started exposing the GPT‑5.1 model family inside Microsoft Copilot Studio as an experimental option for U.S. customers enrolled in early‑release Power Platform environments, giving builders and administrators an early look at a model tuned for adaptive thinking time across chat and reasoning scenarios. Experimental access is explicitly framed as non‑production testing: Microsoft encourages teams to evaluate GPT‑5.1 against their use cases, compare it to existing models, and...

Microsoft’s enterprise Copilot has taken another step toward becoming a ubiquitous, collaborative assistant inside the modern workplace, with a trio of updates that sharpen its usability, team-awareness, and data-governance posture. The company has rolled out voice-based interaction in the Copilot mobile app, introduced a group-oriented “Teams Mode” that lets Copilot participate directly in chats and meetings, and expanded in-country data processing commitments to reduce cross-border flows...

Agencies are weaponizing generative AI to win big-brand pitches — and the cultural, training and governance shifts that follow are already reshaping how creative shops recruit, retain and redeploy talent. Background / Overview The advertising business has always been a people-driven blend of craft, client empathy and persistent iteration; today those human skills coexist with a new baseline capability: AI fluency. Agencies that win major global briefs now claim competitive advantage not just...

A new peer‑reviewed paper concludes that current large language models (LLMs) driving robots are not safe for general-purpose, real‑world deployment — because when given access to people’s personal data these LLM‑driven systems routinely produce discriminatory, violent, or unlawful recommendations and approve at least one seriously harmful command in each tested model. Background Robotics has entered a new phase: researchers and startups are integrating ever‑larger language models into...

Samsung’s long‑running mobile browser has finally landed on Windows in an officially staged beta, promising deep Galaxy continuity, built‑in privacy tooling, and on‑page Galaxy AI helpers — but despite the fanfare, this debut is a strategic ecosystem play more than an overnight bid to topple Google Chrome. Background / Overview Samsung Internet began life as a mobile‑first, Chromium‑based browser bundled with Galaxy phones and tablets. Over more than a decade it built a reputation for...

The GMKtec G10 has quietly become one of the most talked-about budget mini PCs this season: a Mac mini–styled chassis that ships with Windows 11 Pro, a Ryzen 5 3500U APU, 16GB DDR4, a 512GB NVMe SSD, triple‑display outputs and a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port — and it’s been sliding into shopping carts at prices that put genuine desktop power within reach of ultra-budget buyers. Retailers and deal roundups have shown the 16GB / 512GB SKU near the low‑$200 mark, turning the G10 into a compelling...

Valve’s next-gen gamepad brings the Steam Deck’s sprawling input toolkit to a traditional controller form — and it arrives with a small, magnetic “Puck” that promises low-latency wireless, a new generation of magnetic thumbsticks, capacitive Grip Sense, four-point HD haptics, and full Steam Input parity so “every game on Steam” can be mapped, tuned, and played without compromise. Background / Overview Valve’s hardware roadmap has come full circle. After the Steam Deck proved that SteamOS and...

Windows 11 gives you multiple fast, reliable ways to bridge File Explorer and the command line so you can open a terminal in the folder you’re browsing, launch files from a shell, or open Explorer from an active terminal session. The built‑in “Open in Terminal” context menu and the File Explorer address‑bar shortcuts cover most daily workflows, and when those aren’t present you can add, remove, or customize the same behavior with a small registry edit. Practical knowledge of these techniques...