Image: Valve Nearly three years to the day after teasing the world with a white version of the Steam Deck, Valve has finally decided to release the normally black handheld gaming PC in that color too. The limited-edition white model is going on sale for $679 on November 18th at 3PM PT / 6PM ET, everywhere the handheld is sold, including Australia and the various regions of Asia served by Komodo. It’s no different on the inside than a normal model, says Valve: Steam Deck OLED: Limited Edition White has all the same specs as the Steam Deck OLED 1TB model, but in white and grey. It also comes with an exclusive white carrying case and white microfiber cleaning cloth.Since the 1TB OLED normally costs $649, you’re effectively paying $30 for the color.... Continue reading…

During the initial stages of your home lab journey, youll experience a lot of thrills when trying out new ideas. But as your collection of self-hosted services, containers, virtual machines, and hardware starts to pile up, youll have to contend with hours of troubleshooting and dabbling through config files.

Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images The New York Times’ tech employees, who are behind Wordle and Connections among other games and features, will go back to work on Tuesday following a weeklong strike. In a statement published on Monday, the New York Times Tech Guild said union members will “march into the office together in the morning as a symbol of what’s to come for The Times.”The Tech Guild represents the over 600 workers who manage technology across the digital paper. Union members went on strike the day before the US election, raising concerns about whether the NYT’s vote-tracking tech, like the Needle, would hold up on Election Day. The union and the NYT will continue negotiating on a contract.“The systems and digital products that worked over the election did... Continue reading…

While working on your Windows device, you probably receive frequent notifications about OS updates. These notifications, although harmless, can appear at very inconvenient times, like when you are attending an online meeting or seminar, finishing a project, playing your favorite game, enjoying the best scene of a movie, or other such situations, causing you frustration. Many users pause or completely stop Windows updates in order to counter such situations. But have you ever wondered why Windows updates appear so frequently? Is it even okay to pause or stop Windows updates?

Monitors can be expensive, especially if you're looking for one that provides lots of screen real estate and offers great performance. So if you're in the market and aren't looking to spend a lot, we recommend going with this Samsung Odyssey G5 ultrawide monitor. It features a 34 inch ultrawide panel, that's now down to a ridiculous price of just $229. This monitor normally has a retail price of $550, but in this limited time deal, you can score 58% off, dropping it down to its lowest yet.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Signal is making a bunch of improvements to calls so they are more competitive with Zoom and Google Meet, including the ability to share a link to a call.Previously, you could only initiate a call from a Signal group chat, so this new feature should make it much easier to hop on the phone with a friend or co-worker by sending them a link inside or outside of Signal. You can also re-use call links, which could be handy for recurring work meetings or a weekly chat you have with your family. Image: Signal Within calls, Signal is getting some upgrades, too, including a “raise hand” button to let people know that you have something to say and emoji reactions so you can spam your emoji feelings. And the app now has a tab... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Nintendo is finally ready to show off the next phase of Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. In a Nintendo Direct today, the company gave the first proper look at the Donkey Kong Country-themed expansion for the theme park, which includes a mine cart rollercoaster and a real-life, three-player version of the Donkey Konga rhythm game. The expansion opens on December 11th.To get to the new area, attendees go through a tunnel seemingly made with rocks, that leads to a jungle-themed locale. There’s a towering tree house, a golden temple spewing steam, and lots of banana-flavored deserts. And just like in the games, you can find — and collect — giant letters hidden around the area using the park’s NFC bracelet.... Continue reading…

You know those times when you get a pizza from Pizza Hut while you're playing on your PS5 and you're sitting there thinking "Man, I wish I could make a holder with my 3D printer so I can heat up my pizza using the PS5's heat while I play games"? Yeah, me neither. However, that hasn't stopped the pizza chain from releasing the PizzaWrmr, a 3D-printed shell you can use to warm up your food while you play your games. Just be careful before you make it!

Image: Bluesky Bluesky gained more than 700,000 new users in the last week and now has more than 14.5 million users total, Bluesky COO Rose Wang confirmed to The Verge. The “majority” of the new users on the decentralized social network are from the US, Wang says. The app is currently the number two free social networking app in the US App Store, only trailing Meta’s Threads.People posting on Threads, on the other hand, have raised complaints about engagement bait, moderation issues, and, as of late, misinformation, reports Taylor Lorenz. And like our very own Tom Warren, I’ve come to dislike the algorithmic “For You” feed that you can’t permanently escape, and it certainly seems like we’re not alone in that opinion.But the Instagram-bootstrapped... Continue reading…

People often like to say that PC building is like putting Lego blocks together. While the statement rings true in essence, it highlights a tendency to oversimplify many aspects related to building PCs, reviewing components, and the impact of individual components on overall performance. Compounded over decades, this tendency leads to common misunderstandings about PC hardware, with many users believing in things that are half-truths or entirely false.

Google’s Learn About website. | Image: Google Google has launched an experimental new AI tool called Learn About, which is different from the chatbots we’re used to, like Gemini and ChatGPT. It’s built on the LearnLM AI model that Google introduced this spring, saying it’s “grounded in educational research and tailored to how people learn.” The answers it provides have more visual and interactive elements with educational formatting.We tested Learn About and Google Gemini with a simple prompt: “How big is the universe?” Both answered that “the observable universe” is “about 93 billion light-years in diameter.”However, while Gemini opted to show a Wikipedia-provided diagram of the universe and a two-paragraph summary with links to sources, Learn About emphasized an image from the... Continue reading…

Intel's Core i9-14900K launched to initially positive reviews, but it quickly became clear that Intel had a problem. While a few reviewers reported signs of instability, I approached Intel with my findings (with the help of FACEIT) and discovered that there was indeed a problem with the CPU and that the initial blame lay largely on motherboard OEMs. Since then, it's become clear that it's an intel problem too, and multiple BIOS updates later, we're in a position where things should be okay.