How to play Steam games in any room of your house

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

What happens if you’re gaming on your desktop Windows PC but want to continue the game from a different part of the house — or even out of the house? If you’re using Steam, Valve’s PC gaming destination, you can get around the first part of this dilemma by using Steam Link, an in-home game streaming solution that uses your local network. And now, there’s a way around the second as well — with some caveats.

While the recent release of the Steam Deck has provided gamers with a new way to play games away from their desktop, the Steam Link feature lets you stream your games from anywhere using an Android or Apple device with an internet connection (R.I.P Steam Link Box). Even though Steam Link has been out of beta for some time, the service...

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Microsoft details its Steam Deck support for Xbox Game Studios titles

Microsoft is providing an update on its support for Valve’s Steam Deck today. Most Xbox Game Studios titles will run on the Steam Deck, but Microsoft says Gears 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Halo Infinite, and _Microsoft Flight Simulator X_are unsupported. These titles don’t work on the Steam Deck due to anti-cheat systems, and it’s not clear if they’ll ever be supported in the future.

Microsoft has marked eight games as “Verified,” and six more as “Playable.” The difference between the two can be something as small as a warning appearing or even having to invoke a virtual touchscreen to enter text during a game. While some are only on the playable list right now, they could soon progress to verified status.

Microsoft’s list only...

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You can save up to $50 on some Nintendo Switch games for Mario Day

Deals coming at you like goombas | Image: Nintendo

March 10th is the unofficial holiday to celebrate all things Nintendo, and a variety of retailers are offering bargains on first-party Nintendo titles and some of the best accessories for the Nintendo Switch. While neither the Switch Lite nor OLED models of the Nintendo Switch are currently discounted, both models are readily available for late adopters or anyone who has been looking to upgrade from the classic Switch (in the case of the Switch OLED model).

Games for the Nintendo Switch go on sale fairly regularly, but it's not often that we see substantial discounts on first-party titles, especially the digital versions. The discounts on most of these titles even extend to their Nintendo eShop listings, which will remain on sale until...

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Xbox consoles can now download updates in Energy Saver mode

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft is making improvements to its Energy Saver mode on Xbox consoles. While Xbox owners have traditionally had to enable Standby mode to continue getting game and system updates while consoles are powered off, the Energy Saver mode will now support downloading updates in the background.

“Now, system and game updates can be downloaded during Energy Saver mode, further saving energy,” explains Dave McCarthy, corporate vice president of Xbox operations. “Energy Saver mode consumes about 20 times less power than Standby mode when the console is not being used or receiving updates.”

Microsoft has now made Energy Saver mode the default option when Xbox owners initially set up a console. The Energy Saver mode does mean it’s slower to...

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The PopGrip JumpStart is a hand-dominating battery bank / grip

It’s a PopSocket, but the size of a small battery bank. | Image: PopSockets

PopSockets has a proposition: what if you could swap out the grip on your phone (which may or may not contain lip balm or a multitool) and stick on a battery bank with an integrated cable whenever you need to charge your phone and keep a solid grip on it? That seems to be the idea behind its new PopGrip JumpStart, a 2,200mAh battery (we’ll get to that number in a moment) that mounts onto the standard PopSocket mount and charges your phone with a pop-out USB-C or Lightning cable (via Gizmodo).

It’s a clever idea, to be sure, but I have some... concerns. Standard PopSockets are comfy to use because they seem to be just the right size and shape. As you may have already guessed, though, the JumpStart is quite a bit bigger, given that it’s an...

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Niantic’s ‘largest acquisition to date’ shows the company is still pushing on AR

Niantic’s Captain Doty mascot. | Image: Niantic

Niantic is acquiring 8th Wall, a company that helps developers make web-based augmented reality apps, in what it says is its “largest acquisition to date.” The acquisition will help boost Niantic’s Lightship developer platform and to help developers “realize their visions for AR in the real-world metaverse,” Niantic’s Brian McClendon said in a blog post. (The company is a big fan of the term “real-world metaverse.”) Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and when asked, Niantic spokesperson Jen Stratton said the details were confidential.

Niantic, the developer of the hugely popular Pokémon Go, has continued to push into AR, most recently with a Pikmin-themed app. But the company has had some misses, having shut down both Catan: Settlers...

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PlayStation 4 owners now get three free months of Apple TV Plus

Image: Apple

Sony is once again announcing a cross-promotion with Apple TV Plus to offer its console owners an extended free trial of the premium service. Owners of the last-gen PlayStation 4 console that are not already Apple TV Plus subscribers can redeem three months of service at no charge. After that, it’s back to the usual $4.99 per month. This promo is similar to the one announced last summer, where PlayStation 5 owners got six months of Apple TV Plus. Both promos are redeemable until July 22nd, 2022.

While the PS5 got the double-length promo, extending this offer to PS4 owners widens the pool of people who qualify — especially with PS5 shipments still plagued by shortages and slowing to a trickle, again, after the holiday season. The PS4...

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The first US Super Nintendo World is coming to Universal Studios Hollywood in 2023

Image: Universal Studios Hollywood

Universal Studios Hollywood will be the first US park with a Super Nintendo World when it opens its doors next year. Last year, the first Nintendo-style theme park made its debut at a Universal Studios location in Osaka, Japan, despite a number of delays and a global pandemic, and we’ve been waiting since the partnership was announced in 2015 to find out when there would be one in the US.

Universal says Nintendo-themed merch will be available in its gift shop soon but didn’t go into much detail about what rides and experiences will be available at the US Super Nintendo World location. To get an idea of what’s in store, you can check out our experience in Japan’s park.

SUPER NINTENDO WORLD opened first at Universal Studios Japan to rave...

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Give me a bigger iPhone SE

Image: The Verge

It’s hard to be too disappointed by the iPhone SE. It’s cute, has great specs for the price, and now has 5G. It, along with the iPhone 13 Mini, fills that small phone niche for people with tiny hands. But as a big phone convert, I’m cheesed that the SE only comes in one size.

A cheaper smartphone with a big screen isn’t a novel idea. There are plenty of them out there — but not if you’re on iOS. Right now, if iPhone users want a bigger-than-standard display, they have to turn their wallets inside out for the iPhone 13 Pro Max. If you get the cheapest configuration possible, you’re looking at dropping $1,099.

When it came time to upgrade my phone last year, I hemmed and hawed between the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 and the 6.7-inch 12 Pro Max. I...

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The Steam Deck now runs Windows

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Valve shipped its $400 handheld gaming console, the Steam Deck, before all its promised features were ready — but one of the biggest is now here. You can now install Windows 10 on a Steam Deck and actually expect it to work because Valve has just released the all-important GPU, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers you’ll need to download and play games.

Importantly, you’ll need to wipe a Steam Deck to do this, there’s no dual-boot yet, and Valve says you can only install Windows 10 since the Steam Deck’s current BIOS apparently doesn’t include firmware TPM support (which Microsoft infamously requires for Windows 11).

No speaker audio yet

Oh, and your speakers and headphone jack won’t work because there’s no audio drivers yet. Bluetooth or USB-C...

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Peloton’s testing a leasing program for its Bike

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy hasn’t been coy about how he plans to get the struggling fitness company back on course. A few weeks ago, McCarthy both quashed sale rumors and dangled the idea of shaking up Peloton’s subscription models. Now, Peloton says it’ll pilot a new subscription model called One Peloton Club in select states starting Friday.

Under the new model, customers will pay a single $60–$100 monthly fee that covers renting the Bike and the cost of classes, according to a Wall Street Journal report. If the customer decides to cancel, Peloton will take back the bike free of charge. The pilot will be available in Texas, Florida, Minnesota, and Denver for a limited time. Customers will have to stop by a local showroom to sign up —...

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Apple Health will soon integrate Oculus Move VR fitness stats

Supernatural / Within

Meta is making another big push for VR fitness. Starting in April, the company will make it possible to see your VR fitness stats from Oculus Move in more places instead of just within a VR app on the Quest and Quest 2 headset. You’ll be able to opt in to see metrics (calories burned, minutes spent working out, and your VR fitness goals) within the Oculus mobile app for iOS and Android.

There’s slightly bigger news for iOS users who want all of their fitness data to go into one pot, so to speak: Oculus Move will support integration with Apple Health, so your VR workouts can be tracked in the same app as your standard, non-VR workouts. Meta says that it’s exploring integrations with additional fitness tracking platforms.

Syncing your VR...

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Biden administration extends mask mandate for airplanes and public transportation

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration is preparing to extend the mask mandate on airplanes and public transportation, according tomultiple mediaaccounts. The mandate, which was set to expire on March 18th, will be extended another month as officials continue to monitor the drop in COVID-19 cases across the country.

Airplanes and public transportation are some of the last places where Americans are still required to wear masks. Most states have lifted their requirements for schools and other public places, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new guidelines say that masks aren’t necessary in areas with a low risk for transmission.

The mask requirement for air travel and public transit will now extend to April 18th

The mask...

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How the new iPhone SE stacks up against its budget-friendly Android competitors

While many Android phones look like each other from farther away, the iPhone SE (2022) looks like many iPhones before it. | Image: Apple

The new iPhone SE may look eerily familiar to anyone who has seen an iPhone in the last eight years, but as Apple has shown us with its budget line, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. The latest entry-level iPhone is set to come out on March 18th, with preorders going live on Friday, March 11th, and when it does it will be packing a beefy A15 Bionic processor and a slightly higher starting price of $429 with 64GB of storage. That’s the same processor found in the iPhone 13 line, making the SE nearly as capable as other current iPhones. But what if you’re not just shopping in Apple’s world? How does a “budget” iPhone compare to Android phones within a comparable range of value?

First off, let’s get the most obvious determining factor...

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The Overwatch 2 closed beta will finally let you play as a Black woman

As opening day for Overwatch League season 5 fast approaches, Blizzard is finally sharing more news on the progress of Overwatch 2. In a developer update, the Overwatch 2 team said closed alpha testing will begin today, with a closed beta to follow in April. The closed alpha will be open to a select group of people, including Overwatch League pros, while the closed beta will feature an expanded group of participants who can request access to the beta by signing up at PlayOverwatch.com, though you might want to wait a bit since the site is experiencing problems.

Interestingly, neither the closed alpha nor beta will feature any PvE elements and will instead focus entirely on PvP. According to the Overwatch blog, “We are changing our...

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How Twitter plans to add its next 100 million users

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has an enormous goal: the company wants to add another 100 million daily users by the end of 2023 — a growth of about 50 percent from where it is today. To do that, Twitter is going to need to add users at a far faster pace than it has in recent years, launching and iterating on new products and getting users to engage with the app more regularly.

To that end, the company has continued to shake up its leadership and structure after appointing a new CEO, Parag Agrawal, in November. On Thursday, the company announced its latest changes, appointing three new consumer product leaders under the unit’s general manager, Kayvon Beykpour: Jay Sullivan, VP of consumer product, Arnaud Weber, VP of consumer product engineering, and Anita...

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Facebook Group admins can now auto-reject posts that fact-checkers have debunked

Facebook adds new tools for Groups to manage misinformation | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook has added new features for Groups aimed at helping reduce the amount of misinformation shared among group members, parent company Meta announced. One of the options allows Group admins to auto-decline posts that third-party fact-checkers have determined contain false information so that the post isn’t shown to other members within the Group.

This has been a big problem for Facebook; since many Groups are private, harmful or incorrect information can be spread quickly and with little oversight. Groups have been blamed for helping boost the visibility of COVID-19 misinformation and other conspiracy theories and for providing a place for bad actors to formulate plots to kidnap Michigan’s governor and coordinate parts of the January...

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Jack Thompson still has a grudge

Illustration by Michelle Rohn / The Verge

At age 70, the infamous attorney hasn’t changed his mind about violent video games

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Screw it, the rectangles are back

Your eyes do not deceive you. | Image: Apple

Rejoice, peasants! Your proletarian gadgets may live another year yet!

I refer, of course, to the Mac Studio that Apple recently announced, which hits shelves March 18th. The company made a number of lofty claims about the device’s power and efficiency, using various charts that it did not label in any particularly useful way. Those are just claims until we get our hands on a unit — we’ll need to verify the metrics ourselves.

But Apple also showed us pictures of the device. We’ve seen it. And there are two things we know for sure, without a doubt, that it has. Computer, enhance:

Image: Apple

Sure, there are some ports for Thunderbolt, Ethernet, whatever. But look at those two little rectangles to theleft of the...

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Disney’s queer content won’t save it from being on the wrong side of history

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill has passed in the Senate

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Princess Peach is the latest Mario character to get their own interactive Lego sets

Lego’s interactive Super Mario universe is getting even bigger today with the addition of a Lego Princess Peach starter kit, which adds the Mushroom Kingdom’s ruling royal to the ever-expanding array of modular sets.

Like the addition of Lego Luigi last year, the Lego Princess Peach starter kit doesn’t make any major changes from the initial Lego Mario sets from 2020. The broad technology is still the same for all three characters, which uses a combination of an LCD display for animating each character’s facial expressions and a main screen on their chests and a sensor to scan barcodes and react to different colored Lego tiles. The Lego characters can also connect to a companion app over Bluetooth, as well as to each other for two-player...

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Colors of Climate

Nicole Kelner takes climate data and turns it into calming watercolor visualizations. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Nicole Kelner’s watercolors bring calm to images of climate change

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Amazon Pharmacy partners with health plans for discount drugs

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon Pharmacy is offering a prescription drug discount card to Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance customers in five states, Nworah Ayogu, chief medical officer for Amazon Pharmacy, said in an interview at a health technology conference this week.

So far, the program includes partnerships with Blue Plans in New Jersey, Nebraska, Alabama, Florida, and Kansas.

The partnership lets plan customers get discounts through a MedsYourWay card when they use Amazon Pharmacy to buy their medications — and the cost of those drugs still counts towards their insurance deductibles. Typically, people with prescription discount cards have to choose between buying a drug out-of-pocket with the discount but not having the cost go towards their deductible or...

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The Mac Studio’s ports are a step back in all the right ways

The ports have won. After years of Apple’s USB-C experiments, the past few months have seen a decisive victory for the concept of “being able to plug things into your computer without a complicated array of dongles and adapters” — marked in particularly by the latest announcement of Apple’s new Mac Studio desktop.

Not only does the new Mac Studio pack _six_USB-C ports — four of them full-fledged Thunderbolt 4 on the entry-level model and all six featuring Thunderbolt 4 support on the $3,999 M1 Ultra model — there’s a UHS-II SD card slot, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, a headphone jack, and two USB-A ports. It’s a glut of ports that manages to outclass even the best proper, standalone Thunderbolt docks (the current reigning champ, the...

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Why the cryptocurrency community is celebrating Biden’s executive order

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge

The White House’s plan for digital asset regulation is here, and though the order doesn’t say much, cryptocurrency advocates are treating it as a win. Maybe that was inevitable, after a great deal of Twitter FUD (investor-speak for fear, uncertainty, doubt) about what the order would contain. The actual text, despite being a bit vague, is nonetheless a positive for the industry — not least because it gives everyone some time.

Its approach sidelines cryptocurrency’s most dogged skeptics

There have been a few last-minute attempts to regulate cryptocurrency. There was, for instance, the time the Trump administration’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network attempted to push new proposed regulations over Christmas. (This was suspended.) There...

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Google details its latest big Android feature drop

Image: Google

Google Photos’ portrait blur feature on Android will soon be able to blur backgrounds in a wider range of photos, including pictures of pets, food, and — my personal favorite — plants. It’s one of a host of updates coming to Google’s apps and services on Android, which also includes tweaks to Google TV, a new screen time widget, and wider deployment of a Gboard feature that helps improve your grammar.

Google Photos has previously been able to blur the background in photos of people. But with this update, Pixel owners and Google One subscribers will be able to use it on more subjects. Portrait blur can also be applied to existing photos as a post-processing effect.

Image: Google

The grammar checker in action.

T...

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Nvidia GeForce Now RTX 3080 tier now available monthly for $19.99

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia is making its top GeForce Now RTX 3080 membership tier available on a monthly basis. The service, which uses RTX 3080-level hardware to stream games from Steam or Epic Games Store, will now be available for $19.99 per month. That means you can try out the top RTX 3080 tier for a month, instead of signing up to the service for six months.

The RTX 3080 tier is one of the best streaming services available right now, thanks to its improved latency and support for raytracing and 120fps. You can stream at up to 1440p resolution with 120fps on PCs and Macs, and 4K HDR at 60fps on Nvidia’s Shield TV. Nvidia still continues to offer six-month memberships for $99.99, which works out to around $16.66 per month, or a saving of $19.95.

...

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The Magic Leap 2 isn’t a revolution, but it’s a visible improvement

I’m looking at a mountain range projected on a wooden table. The mountain range isn’t part of a flashy game or art project. I can’t reach out and touch it like a real object. Thanks to some still-in-progress software optimization, it glitches a little when I move. And I’ll never purchase the high-end augmented reality headset that’s creating the illusion — the Magic Leap 2, set for launch later this year. But the scene is remarkable for an important reason: I can actually see all of it at once.

Magic Leap was once known for its theatrics and huge promises, but the massively funded yet embattled startup has spent years trying to get back to Earth. It laid off a huge portion of its workforce and changed CEOs in 2020, scrapping its...

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The future of makeup is lipstick you can print

The YSL Rouge Sur Mesure can print up to 4,000 shades

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Android’s iOS-friendly emoji reactions officially launch in major Google Messages update

Emoji reactions should now play more nicely between iOS and Android. | Image: Google

We’ve known formonths that Google has been working to make its Messaging app properly display emoji reactions sent by iPhone users. Now Google is making the feature available to all as part of a host of new and updated features for its Messages app that are rolling out over the coming weeks.

The beta already gave us a pretty good idea of how Google Messages translates emoji reactions sent by iOS users, properly formatting them on Android instead of appearing as a confusing text message that arrived separately.

Despite Google’s capitulation, it still says it wants “Apple to join the rest of the mobile industry and adopt RCS” for a better long-term solution.

Image: Google

The Google Photos sharing link and emoji...

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