You can technically run Windows on gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck, but it's not really designed for small-screened devices and their specialized hardware. However, there's at least one person at Microsoft who would like to improve the situation. Developer and Reddit user AndrewMT has confirmed that a Walking Cat video leak represents a hackathon project meant to optimize Windows 11 for Steam Deck-style devices. The proposal from September would have not only improved driver support, but fine-tuned the interface and introduced tools to help you quickly launch and exit games regardless of which service they came from.

The project was spurred by the desire to use multiple non-Steam services (such as Xbox Game Pass and GOG) and Windows' support for game mods and trainers, AndrewMT says. He also notes that The Verge isn't right in suggesting that this is an ongoing initiative. The handheld Windows proposal "didn't go much of anywhere," the developer explains. While Xbox head Phil Spencer offered contact with people who could help, they were occupied at the time. AndrewMT is hopeful the publicity will help pitch the idea a second time.

Numerous gaming handhelds, including the new ASUS ROG Ally as well as portables from Ayaneo and GPD, already run Windows out of the box. However, their creators typically load custom front-ends to make up for Windows' lack of optimization. And while you can technically use Xbox Cloud Gaming on a Steam Deck thanks to the web, Valve's system is ultimately a Linux machine built to run Steam games.

A project like AndrewMT's would theoretically encourage manufacturers to build Windows-powered handhelds. They wouldn't have to pour as much work into software, and could expect games from a wide range of stores to run smoothly. Any official commitment would take a while to pan out, however. While Microsoft senior user experience designer Dorothy Feng has already explored a prototype handheld interface, there's considerably more work necessary to make this proposal a practical reality.

So long HBO Max, hello… Max? This week, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss Warner Bros. pivot away from the beleaguered HBO Max service, and towards something that unifies HBO and Discovery’s content. Does Max help, or hurt the HBO brand? And does the name even matter when people will always line up for the next Game of Thrones spin-off? Also, we dive into the NVIDIA RTX 4070, a champ of a mid-range GPU, as well as the latest from Elon Musk’s disastrous Twitter reign.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• Max (just Max) is replacing HBO Max – 1:34

• NVIDIA’s RTX 4070 review: excellent at 1440p gaming, still pricey at $499 – 21:15

• This week in Twitter mess: NPR and PBS quit Twitter over account labeling, AI project allegedly in the works – 23:03

• Worker morale is low at Meta after layoffs – 27:57

• Lo-fi girl is back, and she made a new synth wave friend – 30:40

• AI Update: Stable Diffusion is already taking illustrator jobs in China – 32:34

• Working on – 35:48

• Pop culture picks – 37:44

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Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos
Graphic artists: Luke Brooks

Microsoft has begun integrating Bing AI capabilities into its popular keyboard app SwiftKey. While the third-party tool already includes some AI features, like learning from users' writing styles to make suggestions. Once a user clicks on the Bing button, which is located on the top left side of the keyboard, it offers three options: Search, Tone and Chat. 

Say you want to know which dessert pairs best with lasagna, just type that in to the search bar as you converse. Chat will suggest responses that it feels are in keeping with the messages or emails it's responding to. Tone, however, can help keep things more formal if you're replying to a work email and need a hand making things appear a little more professional.

Any iOS and Android users can set SwiftKey as their default keyboard across apps, like social media and email. Basically, if an app allows a third-party keyboard, you can use SwiftKey on it. Aside from AI technology, SwiftKey's other features include correcting spelling mistakes, task saving and a personalized toolbar. The Bing button lives on the left side of the keyboard and also autosuggests across the top as a person types.

SwiftKey can also access up to five chosen languages and, in the same release, Microsoft revealed updates to its translation services in the Bing App. Users translating words and phrases from English to French, Spanish or Italian will now see the masculine and feminine versions, versus the chatbot making assumptions.

Bing's inclusion into SwiftKey follows the lead of other Microsoft programs like Skype and Microsoft Start. Skype lets users message directly with Bing in a group chat or on-on-one, while Microsoft Start provides access to Bing across the app. 

Nintendo shared one last trailer of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before it launches on May 12th. It teases the whole Hyrule world – including the floating island – as well as Link's allies, who will fight alongside him. The plot is typical Zelda fare: You have to find the princess and defeat Ganon. But the fused weapons and vehicles both seem to be major parts of how the game will play. You can even build a robot to take on enemies that have their own battle platform. Robot Wars, but make it Zelda?

– Mat Smith

​​The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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PBS has also quit Twitter over its 'government-funded media' label

Fellow public broadcaster NPR said this week it would stop tweeting.

PBS has halted its use of the platform. The organization hasn't posted on its Twitter account since April 8th. Both PBS and NPR claim the label, which previously read "state-affiliated media," doesn't represent them accurately. Twitter previously reserved such labels for state-run outlets, like China's Xinhua News Agency and Russia's RT and Sputnik.

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How to choose the best pizza oven

What you need to look for when shopping for one.

Small outdoor pizza ovens have become popular for backyard cooking in recent years. While anyone with a decent-sized patio could install a permanent one, these versatile products are more compact and store easily in a bag when you’re not using them. That makes them great if you have limited outdoor space. Alongside what to look for, we’ve separated outdoor and indoor pizza ovens – so everyone gets pizza in 2023.

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ASUS' ROG Phone 7 uses AI to automatically record your wins and losses

The new external cooler doubles as a subwoofer.

ASUS ROG

For someone (and some reason), ASUS continues to create its pro-gamer ROG phones. Once again, they wouldn’t look out of place beside keyboards, gaming mice and beefy gaming laptops. The ROG Phone 7 series, this time, incorporates AI for automatic gaming capture. The new clip-on cooler also now doubles as a subwoofer for even… louder gaming. In Taiwan and Europe, you can pre-order select models in the ROG Phone 7 series starting today. ASUS has confirmed the ROG Phone 7 series will eventually launch in the US.

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Researchers used machine learning to improve the first photo of a black hole

The photo algorithm was trained on over 30,000 black hole simulations. 

Lia Medeiros / Institute for Advanced Study

Researchers have used machine learning to tighten up a previously released image of a black hole. As a result, in a report published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the portrait of the black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, over 53 million light years away from Earth, shows a thinner ring of light and matter surrounding its center. They used PRIMO, “a novel dictionary-learning-based algorithm” that learns to “recover high-fidelity images even in the presence of sparse coverage” by training on generated simulations of over 30,000 black holes. It’s an impressive new use of AI, even if the result isn’t particularly visually stunning. And don't get any ideas, Samsung...

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If you're looking for a new smartwatch but aren't keen on Apple devices, Amazon's latest price cut may excite you. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Pro is down from $450 to $394.49, which is a 12 percent savings and lower than the price we saw back on Cyber Monday. 

The Galaxy Watch Pro is one of Samsung's newer options and includes GPS route tracking, a full analysis of your body composition and a titanium case. The Pro also goes beyond the original with an advanced sleep tracker, improved bioactive sensor and better battery life. 

It's worth mentioning that, while not on sale, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 is still over $100 cheaper— a good option if you're looking for a reliable smartwatch with all the basics. It's our pick for best smartwatch for Android users. Plus, it comes in some fun band colors, like like purple and sapphire.

As for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, just the black model with bluetooth are discounted. The gray with bluetooth and the LTE version of both colors are still full price. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Razer has launched a new streaming deck called the Stream Controller X, and it would most likely look familiar to experienced streamers and content creators. It has a very similar form factor to Elgato‘s Stream Deck MK.2, with its 15 LCD switchblade key buttons and a face plate that users can easily swap. The bevel’s spacing is a bit different, though, and according to Tom’s Hardware, it’s just slightly smaller than Elgato’s model. While both streaming decks are priced $150 at launch, Elgato’s has been on sale several times since then and has gone for as low as $120.

The Stream Controller X lets users program multiple actions into one button by dragging them into the custom action editor. Users can even program actions so that they can be triggered consecutively or simultaneously. They can also create custom profiles for various tasks and then automatically switch between them based on the program that’s currently open by enabling the Dynamic Mode. To make multi-tasking even easier, the device is compatible with some of the most popular streaming software and relevant tools, such as Twitch and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Those programs come with ready-made profiles, so users don’t have to create their own. 

Like Razer’s first Stream Controller, the X model is still powered by Loupedeck. The older model was a rebadged version of the Loupedeck Live, though, and looks more like a distant cousin than a sibling to the Stream Controller X.

For Twitter Blue users in the US, the website’s 280-character limit has been a thing of the past since February when it gave them the ability to post 4,000-character tweets. Now, the company has more than doubled that limit and has launched support for tweets up to 10,000 characters in length. In addition, the website now supports bold and italics text formatting, allowing content creators to use those elements to break up potentially huge blocks of text. Twitter chief Elon Musk first announced that the website is making long-form tweets even longer in early March, almost a month after the initial 4,000-character expansion. 

While a 10,000-character limit sounds excessive for most casual users — that’s around 2,000 words, or a pretty lengthy essay — Twitter likely introduced the capability for people looking to make money off their posts. The company has just rebranded “Super Follows” as “Subscriptions,” allowing users to charge people $3, $5 and $10 a month for exclusive content, including subscriber-only chats in Spaces. Twitter also promised not to take any of their earnings for the next 12 months. 

By increasing the character tweet limit for Blue users, as well as allowing them to post “hours long videos,” Twitter is giving creators more ways to keep their subscribers engaged. At the same time, getting users to spend more time on the website means more opportunities to serve them with ads that would make the company more money. That said, Super Follows never quite took off, and it remains to be seen whether this iteration of the subscription service will fare better.

The FBI has made an arrest in connection to a recent leak of classified documents that revealed sensitive details about the war in Ukraine and other US intelligence matters, apprehending a young Massachusetts Air National Guard member on Thursday, April 13th. 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who holds the rank of airman first class, allegedly shared the files to a Discord server primarily dedicated to Minecraft. According to The Washington Post, he first transcribed the documents manually when he started sharing them late last year before posting photos of the classified materials themselves.  

The Justice Department has arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into “alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information,“ Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement issued by the Justice Department. As NBC News notes, public military records show that Texeira was assigned as a cyber transport systems journeyman at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod. 

Based on the The Post’s investigation, Teixeira, who used the pseudonym “OG” on the Discord server, claimed he partly worked at a secure facility where phones and cameras are prohibited. That’s reportedly the reason why he originally copied the documents by hand before the lack of interaction on the server prompted him to post photographs of the original documents. Some of the photos contained random items and furniture that may have given investigators a clue on his identity. 

Despite the sensitive information contained in the documents, the suspect apparently did not intend to be a whistleblower — according to The New York Times, members of "Thug Shaker Central," the original Discord server, say the documents were never intended to be shared outside of their small group. Eventually, though, they were shared to other Discord servers before finding their way to Telegram channels, 4chan and other social media platforms.   

The documents Teixeira had leaked included large amounts of information regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including detailed battlefield conditions and missile strike maps for the latter. They also reportedly showed how Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and how Russia approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons. In addition, the documents apparently contained information showing how the US spies on its foreign allies.  

Discord previously said that it was cooperating with authorities regarding their investigation on the leak. As for Teixeira, he will make his initial appearance in the US District Court for Massachusetts. 

Amazon is joining the generative AI fray. Bedrock is the company’s new API for Amazon Web Services (AWS) that lets developers use and customize AI tools that generate text or images. Think of it as a cloud-based and configurable alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 aimed at businesses and developers.

AWS customers can use Bedrock to write, build chatbots, summarize text, classify images and more based on text prompts. It gives its users a choice of Amazon’s Titan foundation model (FM) and several startups’ models, including Anthropic’s Claude (a Google-backed ChatGPT rival from former OpenAI employees), AI21’s Jurassic-2 (a language model specializing in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch) and Stable Diffusion (a popular open-source image generator). Additionally, businesses and developers can customize how the models work based on input — which Amazon says won’t be used for training the models, according toCNBC. That should (theoretically) address a crucial privacy concern for businesses entering sensitive data.

Amazon views the range of AI models on offer as a way of providing flexibility to customers. The company’s description reads, “With Bedrock’s serverless experience, you can get started quickly, privately customize FMs with your own data, and easily integrate and deploy them into your applications using the AWS tools and capabilities you are familiar with (including integrations with Amazon SageMaker ML features like Experiments to test different models and Pipelines to manage your FMs at scale) without having to manage any infrastructure.”

“Most companies want to use these large language models, but the really good ones take billions of dollars to train and many years and most companies don’t want to go through that,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy toldCNBC on Thursday. “So what they want to do is they want to work off of a foundational model that’s big and great already and then have the ability to customize it for their own purposes. And that’s what Bedrock is.”

Amazon says C3.ai, Pegasystems, Accenture and Deloitte are some early businesses lined up to try Bedrock. The company hasn’t yet announced pricing for the AWS toolset, and it’s currently opening access through a waitlist. You can read more and apply for admission at the project’s website.

Twitter creators who want to make money on the platform will now turn to Subscriptions, not Super Follows, in a rebrand announced by Elon Musk. Twitter originally introduced Super Follows in 2021 as a way for creators to charge for exclusive tweets. Now, subscriptions also include long-form content (thanks to those extra-long tweets) as well as “hours long videos,” according to Musk.

But the details of the program seem to be largely unchanged from Super Follows. Creators can charge $2.00, $4.99 or $9.99 a month, with exclusive content including subscriber-only chats in Twitter Spaces, as well as special badges for paid subscribers. Interestingly, as The Verge, points out, a help page says that “we hope to include newsletters and other Twitter features as potential bonus content.” That’s notable given Musk’s recent feud with Substack as well as because he shut down Revue, the newsletter platform Twitter acquired in 2021, soon after taking over as CEO.

Super Follows never seemed to gain much traction, even before Musk took over Twitter. Now, it seems he’s trying to lure creators with more favorable terms, at least initially. He said that Twitter would not be taking an additional cut of creators’ earnings from Subscriptions “for the next 12 months.” Instead, creators can expect 70 percent of their earnings from mobile and about 92 percent from web-based subscriptions, which should account for all revenue after app store and payment processing fees. “We will also help promote your work,” Musk said, though he didn’t elaborate on what that would entail.