Sean is a senior editor at The Verge, a very good website he helped found in 2011. He thrives at the intersection of gaming, technology, and toys, with a side of consumer advocacy because companies just canāt help themselves, can they? Sean previously led breaking news teams at The Verge and CNET and the reviews program at Gizmodo. He also has that voice. (Contact me securely at Signal by tapping here.) Ethics statement, June 2023: Seanās wife is employed by Apple as a video producer. He therefore does not currently report or edit stories about Apple products or Apple as a company.
Valveās 0.3.0 update for Steam Frame claims āSubstantially faster charging while unit is off / sleeping.ā Itās true. I used to see 8-watt charging when plugging in a dead unit, and 27-watt charging at peak. Now Iām getting 19-21W charging right away and up to 42W in game.
Thatās enough to plug in a dead Frame and start playing right away.
The Steam Frame and Meta Quest headsets can natively beam your Windows monitors into a headset ā but some still prefer Virtual Desktop, the app that pioneered the idea in 2016 before getting āsherlockedā by Meta. Developer Guy Godin says Valve didnāt send him a Frame, but heāll try to port it anyhow.
Technically, I can already stream Virtual Desktop Classic, with working 3D video, but my monitors are stitched together and the controls feel awkward.
āLepton is intended to help game developers bring their VR Android games to the Steam Frame,ā Valve writes. āLepton is not designed for general Android use, instead opting to keep the bare minimum functionality required to launch into games.ā
Developers have already used it to port Meta Quest games to the Steam Frame. But could it do more?
[GitLab]
Youāve heard of the Turing Test to see if a machine can pass as human, right? Maybe youāve even heard Alan Turingās warning that machines could ātake controlā? If you read his actual lecture notes, he cites the 1872 book Erewhon, which you can also read for free. Itās incredible to look back on both at our present moment:
Sure, the Xbox Oneās disc strategy blew up in the companyās face, giving Sony the perfect ammo. But as Tom reveals, Microsoft decided to secretly start printing unique serial numbers on its discs way back then ā a decision thatās paying off now!
Want to win the gadgets I call in for my Today Iām Toying With videos? I boxed up the latest three winnersā items yesterday, and weāre now on TITW Giveaway #12! If youāre in the US you can enter to win right here anytime before 9AM ET Wednesday, or via our email entry option.
The industry is in a panic, but itās been claiming to want legal guardrails for years ā with few meaningful results.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Elon Musk have tentatively agreed to slow their roll, but Meta seemingly isnāt aligned. Mark Zuckerberg just tweeted each company has its own individual responsibility āto move at the pace required to train its models safely,ā and claims Meta is already doing so.
He also prominently links to his manifesto from August, which contains this quote: āAny policy that slows American model releases -- even by a month -- could add significant risk to American leadership while letting foreign models race ahead.ā
