This is the Steam Deck’s box

The Steam Deck in its box. | Image: Valve

Valve has shared a preview of the Steam Deck’s final package design ahead of the handheld gaming PC’s recently delayed launch date.

Each Steam Deck comes with the console and a carrying case, and Valve revealed in these photos that each device also comes with its own USB-C power supply, meaning you won’t have to source your own like you have to with manyrecentsmartphones. The box also has a handful of fun Easter eggs for Valve superfans — I’ve spotted a few Portal references myself.

Image: Valve

The Steam Deck’s box, closed.

Valve says it’s testing the packaging design, so there could be some changes from what you see in the pictures when the Steam Deck ships next year. The company also says it has...

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Zoom might pay you $25 as part of a class-action settlement

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Zoom has reached a settlement (PDF) in a class-action lawsuit over alleged privacy and security issues, and if you used the videoconferencing app before July, then you could be eligible to receive money as a result. The company has agreed to pay $85 million while continuing to deny the allegations and any liability.

There are two groups eligible to file a claim. If you paid for a Zoom Meetings App subscription between March 30th, 2016, and July 30th, 2021, you can file a claim for $25 or 15 percent of what you paid for that subscription (excluding optional add-ons). You’re entitled to whichever is greater.

The plaintiffs allege Zoom failed to prevent Zoombombing

The second bucket is much broader. If you aren’t eligible for the first...

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Here are the best Apple Watch deals right now

The Product Red edition of the Series 6 has often recieved the biggest discounts. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Thinking about picking up a new Apple Watch? It might be tempting to order one of the new Series 7 models, but new Apple hardware always comes at a premium. The latest version of the Apple wearable offers a slightly larger display and some improvements to durability but is largely the same Apple Watch we’re familiar with.

Thankfully, each Apple Watch model offers ample functionality and has seen its fair share of discounts over the last year. So which ones should you consider if you’re in the market for Apple’s popular smartwatch while trying to shop smarter?

There are currently four Apple Watch models to choose from, all of which support watchOS 8. The highest-end is the Apple Watch Series 7, which starts at $399. Last year's model,...

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My mad dash to catch up in time for Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion

Endwalker is coming, and I’m not ready for it. I came to Final Fantasy XIV only this year, ravenously tearing through A Realm Reborn and Heavensward before abandoning the game somewhere in the middle of Stormblood, which is generally considered to be inferior to the other FFXIV expansions.

Then news of a new expansion hit, rekindling my desire to restart my journey, hopefully finishing in time for Endwalker’s launch. I harbored no illusions about my ability to power through one-and-a-half expansions’ worth of content before December 8th, but I could try, and trying meant getting through _Stormblood_first. So I proposed an experiment: Final Fantasy XIV will go down for maintenance at 4AM EST in preparation for a new patch and to open up E...

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Ransomware attack on Planned Parenthood LA exposes info for 400,000 patients

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Hackers were able to access files containing personal information for hundreds of thousands of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles patients with a ransomware attack that occurred in October, according to a report by The Washington Post. A letter sent to affected patients by Planned Parenthood explained that the files contained patients’ names and “one or more of the following: address, insurance information, date of birth, and clinical information, such as diagnosis, procedure, and/or prescription information.”

Planned Parenthood says the ransomware was installed on its network some time between October 9th and October 17th. On the 17th, the organization noticed the intrusion, took its systems offline, and contacted law enforcement and...

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How to arrange for your digital legacy

I’m about to introduce a topic that most of us would rather avoid: our digital legacy. In other words, what happens to all our digital stuff after we die? (And if your answer is “That’s not gonna happen,” you haven’t been paying a lot of attention lately, have you?)

If you’re reading this, odds are that you’ve got a lot of digital stuff, both on your own devices and floating around in the cloud: backups, photos, tweets, Facebook messages, texts, you name it. If you’re no longer around to pay attention, these can hang around for a very long time — and some of it may be important to your survivors. (For example, who else has the passwords to your bank accounts and credit cards?)

So let’s take a deep breath and discuss how to make things...

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The FTC is suing to block Nvidia’s $40 billion purchase of Arm

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm just ran into another massive hurdle: the Federal Trade Commission, which announced today that it’s suing to block the merger from going through due to concerns that the combined companies would “stifle competing next-generation technologies.” The suit comes after an FTC investigation into the deal following complaints from Google, Microsoft, and Qualcomm shortly after the merger was announced.

“The FTC is suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies,” said FTC Bureau of Competition director Holly Vedova in a statement. “Tomorrow’s technologies depend on preserving today’s...

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EA puts Apex Legends boss in charge of Battlefield as part of internal shakeup

EA is making a big change to the management of the Battlefield franchise by putting Vince Zampella, the CEO of Titanfall and _Apex Legends-_maker Respawn Entertainment, in charge of the series, according to a GameSpot article published Thursday.

Alongside Zampella’s new oversight of the franchise, EA plans to build an interconnected Battlefield universe, he told GameSpot. To help support that, EA is creating a new Seattle-based team focused on “injecting more storytelling into the Battlefield universe” headed up by Halo veteran Marcus Lehto, while Ripple Effect, which made _Battlefield 2042’s_customizable Portal mode, is working on a “new Battlefield experience in the Battlefield 2042 universe.”

The changes arrive shortly after...

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This is not a drill — please return these DeWalt wireless neckbuds for your safety

Wear a helmet but please remove the neckbuds | Image: DeWALT

If you didn’t know that tool manufacturer DeWalt made wireless headphones, don’t worry — we hadn’t either until they started catching on fire. The DeWalt-branded Jobsite Pro Wireless Earphones are being recalled by manufacturer E-filliate for safety concerns of overheating. The company said the recall affects about 301,000 units, which were were sold in stores including Home Depot and Lowes between December 2019 and July 2021.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall on December 1st and said there had been 61 reports of the headphones overheating, including five fire incidents and four minor burn injuries.

E-filliate says customers can contact the company for a free replacement of its $60 headsets but did not...

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Google is making its first in-house smartwatch that could launch in 2022

This is not the new watch; we have not seen the new watch yet. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google is finally making its own in-house smartwatch that’s set to launch in 2022, according to a person familiar with the matter and a new report from Insider.

While Google has made its own smartphones for years under the Pixel line (which has since extended to other accessories, like wireless headphones), the company has never designed its own smartwatch, despite the fact that Google has had a companion wearable platform for Android since 2014.

The watch is being worked on by Google’s Pixel hardware group separately from Fitbit, which Google bought for $2.1 billion earlier this year. According to Insider’s report, the new upcoming Google watch — it’s not clear whether Google will actually be calling it a “Pixel Watch” yet — will...

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You, too, can have a Jack Dorsey-like block profile picture

My friend said this picture makes me look like Hide the Pain Harold.

Following the news that Square is changing its name to Block, people started noticing (read: making fun of) the company’s new leadership and board of directors pages. While Block is still the same financial company that operates Cash App and Tidal and still has Jack Dorsey as its CEO, the leadership pages now feature each person’s portrait projected onto cubes. Now, Twitter user @tarngerine has pushed this developing meme even further by creating a tool that lets you create your own blockhead image.

Using Blockify Yourself is pretty simple — you select an uncomfortably close-up image of your face (or any image, I suppose, but if you’re looking for the best results...), and the site will turn it into a cube. You can also mess around with...

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Polestar teases its upcoming electric SUV, the Polestar 3, set for release in 2022

Polestar offered a glimpse of its upcoming electric SUV, the Polestar 3, which will be the Volvo performance sub-brand’s first car manufactured in the United States.

The SUV, which is expected to roll out in 2022, will slot into the premium category, putting it in competition with EVs like the Tesla Model X, Audi E-tron, Mercedes-Benz EQC, Rivian R1S, and Fisker Ocean. Notably, the Polestar will be assembled at Volvo’s factory in Charleston, South Carolina, giving it the distinction of being the company’s first EV made on US soil.

“We will build in America for Americans”

“We will build in America for Americans,” says Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO.

In addition to be being a higher-riding vehicle than the Polestar 2 fastback sedan, the...

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Luna Display’s latest update lets you use a Mac as a second PC display

Luna Display’s latest update adds a helpful new feature: allowing you to hook up a Windows PC to a Mac laptop or desktop (including Apple’s flash M1 iMacs) to use as a secondary display. The new update also enables 4K and 5K resolution options (assuming you’ve got a screen that supports it).

While Luna Display has offered Mac-to-Mac connectivity for a while, until now, users were only able to connect PCs to iPads using the company’s dongle and software setup. The new PC-to-Mac connection works both wirelessly and through an ethernet connection, just like the Mac-to-Mac option does.

Additionally, Luna Display’s update adds support for 5K and 4K monitors at full resolutions, although there are still some limitations there: PCs can only run...

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Apple’s frontline employees are struggling to survive

Illustrations by Jesse Zhang

If you ask Jimmy Bailey what killed his best friend Mark Calivas, his answer is simple: “It was Apple.” How else could he explain how the Apple Store wellness champion — known for evangelizing therapy and mental health — would slide into a depression so profound he’d be forced to take medical leave and ultimately die by suicide? “It was nothing in his outside life that did this,” Bailey says. “It was work.”

Calivas started at the Apple Southpoint store in Durham, North Carolina in March 2013. His colleagues laughed when he’d arrived in the morning with multiple changes of clothes (he went on a six-mile run up the American Tobacco Trail on his lunch break) and healthy snacks (he was on the keto diet and carried around two 64oz water...

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GM won’t make new Bolt EVs until at least late January 2022

Photo by Andrew Liptak / The Verge

General Motors won’t build any new Chevy Bolt EVs until at least the end of January 2022. The automaker will instead stay focused on making replacement batteries for the 140,000-plus Bolts that were recalled earlier this year after a series of fires.

The Bolt production line at GM’s Orion assembly plant in Michigan will remain shut down “through the week of Jan. 24, 2022,” the company said in a statement Thursday. “We will continue to inform employees at the appropriate time of any additional production schedule adjustments, as we continue to focus on battery module replacements.”

GM had already said that it wasn’t going to make any more Bolts for the rest of this year, though Thursday’s announcement put a more fine date on things. But...

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Microsoft’s new Office UI is now rolling out to everyone

Microsoft is starting to roll out its new Office UI to all users this week. The visual update was originally announced earlier this year and went into testing over the summer. Now it’s starting to roll out to all Office 365 and Office 2021 users.

This new Office UI is designed to match the visual changes in Windows 11, and it includes a more rounded look to the Office ribbon bar, with some subtle tweaks to the buttons throughout Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It’s a relatively simple refresh, and Office will now match the dark or light theme that you set inside Windows.

Image: Microsoft

The new Office visual update.

The new look can be toggled on or off using the Coming Soon megaphone icon in the top...

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New Google search features make it easier to find the right doctor

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As part of efforts to expand the health information it provides, today Google announced a new feature in search that will allow doctors to list which languages they can speak at their offices.

People who speak languages other than English often struggle to navigate the healthcare system in the United States and are at risk of bad medical outcomes because they have more trouble communicating with providers. They get better care when they have access to trained interpreters or are seen by providers who speak their native languages.

In a blog post, Google also drew attention to other recently added features that address challenges patients face with the health system, including the ability to see what insurance networks are accepted by...

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Twenty percent of Xbox Cloud Gaming players only use touch controls

Over the past year, Microsoft has been steadily adding custom Xbox touch controls to more than 100 games that can be streamed to Android and iOS phones using its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service. While these controls may seem gimmicky to some, Microsoft is now revealing that 20 percent of players use these touch controls exclusively.

“[Twenty] percent of our Xbox Cloud Gaming users use touch as their exclusive method of playing games,” explains Monty Hernandez, a senior program manager at Xbox. “As such, it’s important to us that the touch-enabled games we launch are relevant and, most importantly, play well with touch controls.”

It’s a surprising stat and there are even individual games where 30 percent of players use touch controls...

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Rocket Lab unveils details of new reusable Neutron launcher

An artistic rendering of Neutron | Image: Rocket Lab

This morning, small satellite launcher Rocket Lab unveiled the details of its future, more powerful Neutron rocket — a launch vehicle optimized to carry satellites into orbit for future mega-constellations. Made out of a special carbon composite that Rocket Lab created, Neutron will also be mostly reusable, designed to land on a landing pad after launch — similar to how SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 rockets.

“This is not a conventional rocket,” Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s CEO, said during the unveil, livestreamed on YouTube. “This is what a rocket should look like in 2050. But we’re building it today.” As of now, Neutron is slated for its first flight in 2024.

“This is not a conventional rocket.”

Rocket Lab already has one rocket called...

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Why the metaverse is more than Mark Zuckerberg’s dream

Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

The company formerly known as Facebook has bet big on the metaverse. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hyped the already popular term in October, when he changed the company’s name to Meta and led viewers through its dizzying vision of the future.

But “the metaverse” is a much bigger — and more confusing — idea. From its origins in science fiction, it’s become a catchall for anything that mixes people’s physical and virtual lives. That includes virtual and augmented reality headsets; 3D virtual worlds like Fortnite, Roblox,and Minecraft; and decentralized Web3 services including cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Lots of “metaverse” proponents don’t agree on a single definition for the word or on how much people are already living in it.

...

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The quest to make an AI that can play competitive Pokémon

Image: Nintendo

AI wanna be the very best, like no one ever was

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Govee’s immersive backlights are an affordable way to make your TV glow

Both Govee’s newest and last-gen Immersion TV LED backlights are on sale today. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

If you’re looking to step up your TV game and make watching movies and gaming more immersive, Govee offers a range of colorful lighting kits that also make for great holiday gifts. One of its most appealing products are the Immersion TV LED backlights, which sync to whatever you’re watching on your 55-inch or 65-inch screen, making it appear as if the TV colors are bleeding out of the frame and onto your walls. Responsive LED strips like these are typically expensive, but right now Govee’s 2020 backlighting kit costs just $61 once you clip the $10 off coupon at Amazon. That’s the kit’s best price to date.

Prefer not to shop at Amazon? Govee is selling this product direct for $63. There’s a newer version of these lights, which farther...

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Nikon Z FC review: fashion over focus

It might remind you of a vintage metal camera, but it’s all plastic

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As tech founders resign, Congress loses its favorite targets

Alex Castro

But they stand to gain a real chance at change

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Nvidia GeForce Now ‘RTX 3080’ membership tier arrives in Europe

A selection of the devices GeForce Now streams to. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia’s GeForce Now game streaming service is getting an RTX 3080-themed upgrade in Europe. Nvidia announced the new membership tier in October, and it’s already available in the US. But, as of today, gamers in Europe can start streaming from the company’s new higher-performance servers, which offer improved resolutions, frame rates, and less latency.

The RTX 3080 membership tier offers up to 1440p / 120fps gameplay through PC and Mac, or up to 4K HDR / 60fps when streamed to an Nvidia Shield TV. That’s up from 1080p at 60fps with the current Priority tier. Session lengths can also extend up to eight hours long rather than six, and Nvidia also says the tier offers lower latency. The big tradeoff is price, with the new tier costing...

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The PS5 disc edition is available now at Target

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Shopping for a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X these days is starting to feel like hunting for toilet paper during the early days of the pandemic. Thankfully, however, if you still haven’t been able to land one, right now Target is giving you another shot, with online ordering for in-store pickup at stores near you.

Listings for the $499.99 PS5 with a disc drive are now up. The $399.99 PS5 digital edition along with the $499.99 Xbox Series X are still showing up as sold out, but deal trackers suggest they are in stock and could go live at any moment. And if you already have a next-gen console (or don’t need one to play last-gen games) the page for Microsoft’s novelty $99.99 Xbox Series mini-fridge shows it’s due for a restock as well.

We...

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Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

Microsoft’s new Edge prompt.

Microsoft has never been a fan of Windows users downloading Chrome instead of using Edge, but the company has now stepped up its campaign to keep people using its built-in browser. Windows 10 and Windows 11 have both started displaying new prompts when people navigate to the Chrome download page, in an effort to discourage people from installing Google’s rival browser.

These new prompts, spotted by Neowin, include messages like:

• “Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft.”
• “That browser is so 2008! Do you know what’s new? Microsoft Edge.”
• “‘I hate saving money,’ said no one ever. Microsoft Edge is the best browser for online shopping.”

We’ve been able to confirm at...

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Here’s how Google’s experimental 3D telepresence booth works

Image: Google

In a new research paper, Google has detailed the tech behind its impressive Project Starline demo from this year’s I/O conference. Project Starline is essentially a 3D video chat booth that aims to replace a one-on-one 2D video conference call with an experience that feels like you’re actually sitting in front of a real human being.

It sounds simple, but Google’s research paper highlights just how many challenges there are in tricking your brain into thinking there’s a real human being sitting just a few feet away from you. Obviously the image needs to be high resolution and free of distracting artifacts, but it also needs to look correct from your relative position in the booth. Audio is another challenge, as the system needs to make...

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Tesla announces all-electric $1,900 Cyberquad for kids

Tesla has quietly launched a $1,900 four-wheel ATV for kids. The Cyberquad for Kids is available to order right now from Tesla’s website, and will begin shipping in two to four weeks. The surprise announcement comes more than two year after Tesla announced a fullsize Cyberquad ATV to compliment its futuristic Cybertruck. The Cyberquad has not yet shipped.

This new pint-sized Cybersquad is designed for kids 8 years old and up, and ones that have parents that can afford to buy them a $1,900 ATV. It includes a steel frame, cushioned seat, and adjustable suspension with rear disk braking. There’s even LED light bars to complete the cyberpunk aesthetics. This all-electric ATV has a top speed of 10mph, and the battery will power up to 15 miles...

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Apple may have a problem with iPhone demand as well as supply

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple is indicating to its iPhone 13 component suppliers that it may not order as many units as expected due to a drop in demand, according to a report in Bloomberg.

While the company had already cut orders for the year to 80 million — down from a target of 90 million — it was reportedly planning to make up for much of the drop next year. Now, though, Apple is said to have told manufacturing partners that this may not happen and they might not see the expected boost in orders.

Like almost every other technology company, Apple has been dealing with supply issues brought on by the global semiconductor shortage. CEO Tim Cook said the company’s last quarterly earnings took an estimated $6 billion hit due to the shortage as well as the...

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