One weakness of Valve's Steam Deck gaming handheld and SteamOS is that, by default, they will only run Windows games from Steam that are supported by the platform's Proton compatibility layer (plus the subset of games that run natively on Linux). It's possible to install alternative game stores, and Proton's compatibility is generally impressive, but SteamOS still isn't a true drop-in replacement for Windows.

Microsoft and Asus' co-developed ROG Xbox Ally is trying to offer PC gamers a more comprehensive compatibility solution that also preserves a SteamOS-like handheld UI by putting a new Xbox-branded user interface on top of traditional Windows. And while this interface will roll out to the ROG Xbox Ally first, Microsoft told The Verge that the interface would come to other Ally handhelds next and that something "similar" would be "rolling out to other Windows handhelds starting next year."

Bringing a Steam Deck-style handheld-optimized user interface to Windows is something Microsoft has been experimenting with internally since at least 2022, when employees at an internal hackathon identified most of Windows' handheld deficiencies in a slide deck about a proposed "Windows Handheld Mode."

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The daughter of a woman who was killed by extreme heat during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against major oil companies claiming they should be held responsible for her death.

The civil lawsuit, filed on May 29 in King County Superior Court in Seattle, is the first wrongful death case brought against Big Oil in the US in the context of climate change. It attempts to hold some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies liable for the death of Juliana Leon, who perished from overheating during the heat dome event, which scientists have determined would have been virtually impossible absent human-caused climate change.

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With the federal hiring freeze lifting in mid-July, the Trump administration has rolled out a controversial federal hiring plan that critics warn will politicize and likely slow down the process rather than increase government efficiency.

De-emphasizing degree requirements and banning DEI initiatives—as well as any census tracking of gender, race, ethnicity, or religion to assess the composition of government—the plan requires every new hire to submit essays explaining which executive orders or policy initiatives they will help advance.

These essays must be limited to 200 words and cannot be generated by a chatbot, the guidance noted. While some applicants may point to policies enacted by prior presidents under their guidance, the president appears to be seeking to ensure that only Trump supporters are hired and that anyone who becomes disillusioned with Trump is weeded out over time. In addition to asking for a show of loyalty during the interview process, all federal workers will also be continuously vetted and must agree to submit to "checks for post-appointment conduct that may impact their continued trustworthiness," the guidance noted, referencing required patriotism repeatedly.

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Is your Windows PC working as expected—without any bugs or problems—but you still feel unsatisfied using it? Well, you don’t need one thing to be faulty to switch to another! Here’s why I switched to Linux, even though my Windows system was working fine!

New Orleans police have reportedly spent years scanning live feeds of city streets and secretly using facial recognition to identify suspects in real time—in seeming defiance of a city ordinance designed to prevent false arrests and protect citizens' civil rights.

A Washington Post investigation uncovered the dodgy practice, which relied on a private network of more than 200 cameras to automatically ping cops' phones when a possible match for a suspect was detected. Court records and public data suggest that these cameras "played a role in dozens of arrests," the Post found, but most uses were never disclosed in police reports.

That seems like a problem, the Post reported, since a 2022 city council ordinance required much more oversight for the tech. Rather than instantly detaining supposed suspects the second they pop up on live feeds, cops were only supposed to use the tech to find "specific suspects in their investigations of violent crimes," the Post reported. And in those limited cases, the cops were supposed to send images to a "fusion center," where at least two examiners "trained in identifying faces" using AI software had to agree on alleged matches before cops approached suspects.

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