Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine was recently confirmed to launch this summer, despite uncertainties surrounding its pricing. The console was originally announced back in November 2025, but the ongoing RAM and SSD shortages threw a spanner in its launch timeline.

While the company has not revealed the specific launch date of the console yet, eager fans have been digging through FCC filings and connecting the dots to predict when the console could land. As per their findings, it could happen on or before June 29.

FCC filings may have revealed Valve’s launch window

First spotted by Notebookcheck, Reddit user u/wayTooManyBugs examined the FCC documentation of past Valve hardware and pointed out a pattern in how the Steam Controller’s launch was handled. According to the findings, the Steam Controller was submitted to the FCC on November 24, 2025, but its user manual and product images were kept confidential until May 20, 2026. The interesting part is that these documents only became publicly available after the device had already gone on sale.

The same pattern now appears to apply to the Steam Machine. Valve reportedly submitted the Steam Machine’s FCC documents around the end of 2025, and its user manual and product images are scheduled to become public on June 29, 2026. Going by the Steam Controller timeline, fans believe Valve may launch the Steam Machine before those documents are released publicly.

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In other words, June 29 may not be the exact launch date, but it could act as the latest possible date by which the Steam Machine arrives. All that said, this is just a theory at this point, but since Valve has confirmed that the Steam Machine will debut sometime this summer, it could very well happen around this window.

Pricing could still make or break the Steam Machine

The biggest question is still pricing. Earlier reports have suggested that the Steam Machine could cost upwards of $1,000, which would make it a hard sell given that its GPU performance is already known to trail the standard PS5. Valve could still soften the blow by absorbing some of the hardware cost upfront, especially if the goal is to get more users into SteamOS and the wider Steam ecosystem. For now, though, the price may be the one thing that decides whether the Steam Machine feels exciting or excessive.

One of the most interesting new features is Custom Extensions, which lets you create an extension for Safari in natural language. Lastly, the new version of Safari will work the Passwords app to automatically fix website login passwords that are deemed no longer safe to use.

The other exciting implementation of Apple Intelligence is within the Shortcuts app. The app received some artificial intelligence upgrades last year, but this new update takes things much further. You can now use natural language to design an automated shortcut, no longer requiring the manual work of connecting functions within apps together. Apple’s example was that you could type, “Whenever I’m leaving work, calculate the ETA, and send it to Pedro,” which would use a combination of Maps and Messages.

Other updates include using natural language when creating an event in Calendar, which will then fill in the details with contacts or locations. Image Playground also received a major update, which is now based on Google’s Gemini image-generation tech. It can now cook up photorealistic imagery and looks far less limited in what it can do. Like other image-generation apps, Image Playground will be subject to daily limits, but paid iCloud+ subscriptions can buy you more image generation.

Tweaks to Liquid Glass

While AI is the focus of the update, Golden Gate is also a follow-up to last year’s macOS Tahoe. Liquid Glass represented a major change to the way all the user interface elements of the appear, and in macOS Golden Gate, those UI elements are being refined. Answering complaints about indecipherability and messy menus, macOS now has a refraction effect in its transparency, which more strongly obscures background content and makes the text in the foreground easier to read. This can be customized in System Settings, letting you change the transparency level using a slider.

Apple has also made some smaller refinements to the visual identity of macOS. The Tool bar now has a uniform menu, the sidebars expand to the very edge of the window and the icons within the sidebars have color once again. And perhaps my most requested feature, every window has the same corner radius to the window control buttons.

Beyond the visual elements, Apple says it has made improvements to responsiveness, such as memory usage, CPU usage, display rendering, and app switching. One example on the Mac was that moving between Spaces was more fluid now, as is opening Mission Control.

A group of third grade students gather around a board game on a Wednesday afternoon in a Charleston classroom, grabbing game pieces, discussing potential moves and reading out playing cards. The games are not Monopoly, Sorry, or any others of yore – they’re focused on identifying, and boosting, students’ strengths and weaknesses.

It’s part of a shift in school districts’ gifted and talented programs. While many programs focused on a small group of high achieving students, instructors across the nation are now focusing more on inclusion, using data to help them zero in on students’ talents, a method that has the potential of capturing more students for advanced instruction.

For Vanessa Hill, the gifted education coordinator for Amphitheater Public School District in Tucson, Arizona, focusing on strengths and weaknesses helps to solve what she sees as a universal problem with gifted identification.

“Something I’ve been thinking deeply about that tends to be a universal problem is that gifted identification does not match the metrics of your district,” says Vanessa Hill, the gifted education coordinator for Amphitheater Public School District in Tucson, Arizona. “I’m constantly thinking of that, so our demographics can get closer. This new tactic is about exposure to critical thinking and reasoning – what does that look like, how to reason through a problem?”

Re-assessing the methods and ultimately changing the definition of “gifted” comes as some question the value of standardized tests and a push-and-pull to diversify programs.

The Shift In Gifted and Talented

The gifted and talented programs run the gamut of names and acronyms depending on the district, including advanced learning program, TAG (talented and gifted), LEAP (Learning Enrichment Alternative Program) or REACH (Realizing Excellence through Academic and Creative Help), among others.

Regardless of the name, the program has undergone several major shifts over the last few decades. Schools previously often only selectively tested students, often at the behest of involved parents or by a teacher recommendation. That brought a large amount of inequity in the programs, with many moving to a universal screening practice. Some states, including Washington and Missouri, made it a state mandate to test all students while in elementary school. The screening practice itself evolved from an IQ test to aptitude and ability tests, though how accurate those are is up for debate.

“Society is really unequal along socioeconomic and racial and ethnic lines, and these tests are just reflecting that,” says Scott Peters, director of research consulting at NWEA, a nonprofit education assessment organization. “You can change tests all day long, but at the end of the day, you can’t give some kids three years of $40,000-a-year preschool and also wonder why this kid that’s never been to school until first grade doesn’t do as well.”

Often, schools’ gifted and talented programs do not represent their overall school population and instead skew heavily toward white and Asian students. Zohran Mamdani, the widely-watched mayor of New York City, made it part of his platform to phase out gifted and talented programs because of the inequity.

“Ultimately, my administration would aim to make sure that every child receives a high-quality early education that nurtures their curiosity and learning,” he said in a 2025 statement to the New York Times.

There is no silver bullet test that accounts for inequality and a child’s upbringing, although Peters said when factors such as income, race and other equity gaps are controlled in tests, most inequities disappear.

“This isn’t a factor of, ‘Oh, there are students of color scoring high, but they’re still not getting in,’” he says. “It’s that there’s not enough students of color scoring high because of that larger societal inequality issue.”

Because of the often-skewed gifted and talented population, schools are shifting toward “talent development” with all students, versus focusing on strengthening some students’ already solid skills.

“Because of the baggage of the past, we’re moving toward a new perspective where we’re identifying the strengths of students — whether academic, social or emotional — versus people for a program,” says Kristen Seward, clinical professor in gifted, talented and creative studies at Purdue University. “And I think this twist in how we approach education as gifted researchers is going to benefit everybody.”

Using Data for ‘Talent Development’

Developing talent for gifted programs, much like the name itself, varies depending on the district. Seward says many teachers have enriched curriculums, which enhance things like vocabulary, science and social studies — topics that have been put on the back burner over the years in favor of standardized testing. Teachers are trained to spot students’ strengths and respond to those, which in turn, helps with students’ weaknesses.

For example, if a student has a strong vocabulary but struggles in math, the teacher might focus on math vocabulary during math class to put the lesson on a level the child understands.

“I don’t want it to turn into a thing where the teacher is the gate, and if they don’t open the gate, then the students don’t get identified – which has been a problem,” Seward says. “We have to train teachers to be talent scouts, presenting the enriched curriculum. Hopefully it’s not something additional, but something they’d naturally do in their role.”

Elizabeth McLaurin Uptegrove, now the assistant academic director in Charleston County School District, created a “stretch or support” system that involves the games the students played in the aforementioned classroom. When Uptegrove first arrived in Charleston’s school district, South Carolina used to require all second grade students be tested for the gifted and talented program. But after that year, selection changed to a nomination system.

“Which sounds elitist, and it is,” she says, adding white, affluent children were three times more likely to be in the programs.

She pushed for universal testing again for all fourth grade students, which yielded three times as many students identified as gifted, jumping from 40 fourth graders to 150 across the district. Several schools across the country have adopted similar stretch-or-support systems.

But Uptegrove’s efforts go beyond identifying candidates for gifted programs through teacher observation: her game-based system uses data. With the aptitude test, there are verbal, quantitative and nonverbal subsections. The tests indicate if a child is low or high achieving in those areas. Then the children are placed in groups with those of similar abilities to play games that can enhance those skills.

“Typically a teacher is not very well-equipped to come up with activities or lessons that can actually reach their level of thinking ability and games do that really quickly, in a way that’s not as boring for children as a typical worksheet,” Uptegrove says. “That’s where the magic of the games comes in. We’re making rigorous, hard thinking almost irresistible so students are willing to do the activity for longer.”

Hill, the Arizona-based education coordinator, initially implemented Uptegrove’s game strategy across third grade classrooms in five schools: three Title 1 schools and two non-Title 1. She says the schools that have the strength or stretch program in place have higher passing rates of “proficient” or “highly proficient” scores than those who do not.

“To me, it’s the difference between being a passive learner and active learner; by being able to engage in the games, it’s more active learning,” Hill says. “You raise the exposure to critical thinking and are taught to apply those skills to any situation, whether it’s on an achievement test or on the playground with a friend.”

The Future of the Program

Both researchers and teachers acknowledge the “talent development” approach to gifted and talented programs is far from perfect. It is often costly, whether it is buying the games, instilling teacher training or taking out time from testing. Hill pointed to four schools within her district that are closing this year because of financial constraints.

“Ordering the games is no small cost; I feel so blessed it’s that level of importance that we will find the funds,” she says. “As far as critical thinking games, yes that was missing. It is a hole we were filling. I think that while the core curriculum is doing its best, it can oftentimes be a bit surface level.”

Uptegrove agrees, saying she believes the talent development method is becoming more popular, but “there’s a long way to go in belief and funding for it.”

Peters, who has long studied the best educational methods and practices, believes the shift in gifted and talented is a good step. But he has concerns about the larger moves needed for lasting impact.

“It’s easy to have a 30-minute gifted program; it’s hard to have a second through eighth grade math development pipeline involving everyone in the school,” he says. “And advanced learning isn’t enough of a priority for most schools.”

Apple says its upgraded Siri AI can take the stress out of party planning for those of us (myself included) who find ourselves overwhelmed when hosting social events. 

As announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, an upgraded Apple Intelligence (improved with some help from Google’s Gemini AI models) is designed to help you brainstorm ideas, take action across multiple apps and ask questions that require personal context or current online information. 

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Launching in English later this year on Apple Intelligence-enabled devices, the conversational Siri AI will have its own dedicated app that works across devices, so you can ask a question on your iPhone and continue the conversation on your iPad. But it will also act across apps like Messages and Reminders to become your AI personal assistant. This could make it an exceptional party planner. 

During the WWDC keynote, Justin Titi, Apple’s senior director of intelligent system experience engineering, asked Siri AI on iOS for the schedule of the World Cup’s opening weekend. Then, Siri AI suggested dishes from Brazil and Morocco for a watch party centered on that match, located a dessert their daughter recently mentioned in the Messages app, pulled all those dishes together for a complete menu and sent that menu to a specific group chat to see if its members were up for a watch party. 

That’s just one example, but it shows that Siri AI can take the most tedious tasks out of party planning by telling you when certain events will occur, giving you menu suggestions, searching your device to answer personal questions and even sending the party invite. 

Speaking of invites, there’s a new version of Apple’s AI-generated image app, Image Playground, that uses Apple Intelligence to transform your images. Since the app runs on private cloud compute, images are never stored or shared. 

Leslie Ikemoto, Apple’s director of input experience, explains that you can use Image Playground to generate a birthday party invite by taking a photo of a friend from your image library and having it modified to include a birthday cake with a simple description. You can then refine the image further — adding candles to the cake and even changing your friend’s outfit to fit the party theme — by describing the changes you’d like or using touch. 

For those who struggle to create or edit images, Apple Intelligence also takes out that guesswork, so you can focus on the more fun aspects of preparing for a party. Personally, I’d rather save that time and effort for cooking. 

Every step of party planning can now be executed using Apple Intelligence, down to the most minute details: writing and perfecting the invite message in Messages or Mail, and adding and editing the calendar event based on that invite’s context.

If I could avoid all the frustrating parts of party planning, I would. Starting this fall, with Apple Intelligence’s improvements, I will. 

64pc of participating EMEA organisations anticipate an attack in the next year, with 44pc having already experienced an incident over the past 12 months.

According to new research carried out by ESET in the SMB Cyber Readiness Index 2026, “businesses are losing sleep over a high-tech threat that has barely shown up in real attacks”, in a landscape where “everyday scams” are getting through and costing money. 

ESET, which is a Slovakia-based global cybersecurity company, partnered with Esomar member Go4insight to collect data from 4,400 organisations with 25 to 1,000 endpoints across 13 countries.

This included Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US. Contributors were the main decision-makers on, or key influencers of, organisational cybersecurity decisions. 

What was discovered in the research is that 64pc of participating organisations dispersed across Europe, the Middle East and Africa anticipate an attack in the next year, with 44pc having already experienced an incident over the past 12 months.

31pc are of the opinion that the single greatest threat is AI-powered malware, despite ESET’s findings stating that across its managed detection and response service (MDR), not one incident involved generative AI “in any meaningful way”. Rather, among the threats that posed the most risk, were phishing (27pc), unpatched software (23pc), lack of security monitoring (20pc) and weak passwords (20pc).

Commenting on the report, Michal Jankech, the vice-president of enterprise, SMB and MSP at ESET, said: “While 78pc of SMBs recognise cybersecurity’s strategic importance, inconsistent understanding of key threats, technology and terminology, including MDR and security posture, suggests there is still room for improvement. Any improvement will have to start with a reality check. 

“We’ve found SMBs’ concerns are often shaped by headlines on emerging threats like AI-driven attacks, while more routine risks, phishing, unpatched vulnerabilities and lack of monitoring, are underestimated. This hints that many respondents misperceive their security posture and resilience.” 

Invest in safety

ESET’s research also highlighted the need and desire for significant training among participating EMEA organisations.

87pc explained that they believe training to be either critical or important and 51pc train several times a year, while 12pc train monthly. Only 43pc however, were found to be using quality training programmes such as phishing simulations.

Meanwhile, 83pc view their cybersecurity budget as being sufficient or more than sufficient and 39pc expect a budget increase next year. 

Of the future investment into their organisation, 40pc are planning for increased engagement in employee training and awareness, 33pc have a future strategy for cloud security and one-quarter intend to invest in backup and recovery. The main barriers are currently budget limits (26pc), complexity and integration challenges (20pc), and a shortage in talent and skills (18pc).

“As it stands, meeting cybersecurity challenges in 2026 means understanding the intersection of your business needs, human behaviour, the democratisation of powerful technologies like AI, regulatory priorities, and the rather volatile threat landscape – that’s a lot,” said Jankech. “Therefore, to face all of these, there is but one choice – to become more resilient, starting with charting one’s own state of readiness.”

Though Ireland-based organisations were not included in ESET’s survey, George Foley – a cybersecurity specialist for ESET Ireland – offered his opinion as to what Irish organisations should expect. 

“Irish businesses are bracing for a Hollywood version of cybercrime while the side door is left wide open,” he said. “The attack that empties your account is not some self-driving AI super-virus. It is the same dodgy invoice email we have warned about for years, except now it is word-perfect and there are thousands of them. 

“Spend your worry and your budget on the basics. Train your staff to pause before they pay, keep your systems patched and stop reusing passwords. That is what stops the money walking out the door.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Updated, 5.31pm, 9 June 2026: This article was amended to fix some statistical errors.

• Merch on Demand taps into Alexa for Shopping for new AI-generated designs
• Consumer-targeted upgrade works on the app or website, available with Prime shipping
• Only US customers will get it for now – Etsy and others could suffer

Amazon has launched a new feature within Alexa for Shopping that enables customers to generate their own merch designs from AI prompts, which they can then have printed on physical products like hoodies and T-shirts.

Senior Editor Jacquelyn Smith said in an announcement that users may wish to print “a group chat’s funniest inside joke… shirts for an upcoming family reunion… [or] a beloved pet reimagined as a cartoon,” implying the new feature is designed primarily for consumer markets.

The FIFA World Cup starts in just two days – and if you’re preparing to travel to the US, Canada, and Mexico for the games, you’ll want the best World Cup eSIM deals covering all three host countries.

I’m expecting plenty more providers to offer deals for international football fans flying to the US and beyond. The final whistle blows on this year’s tournament in New York on July 19, and I’ll be here throughout highlighting the all the World Cup eSIM deals I can find (well, when I’m not watching the matches anyway).

We’ve tested all the best eSIMs for international travel, and they’re a great way to stay in touch your friends, family, and other fans while traveling without worrying about unpredictable data and roaming charges, or having to switch between physical SIM cards. And if you’re not traveling to the US, Canada, or Mexico to support your team, you can check out the full fixtures list and where to stream the games with our World Cup 2026 Match Finder.

World Cup 2026 eSIM deals: FAQs

When does this year’s World Cup start and end?

Are the World Cup eSIM deals available for all countries/regions?

How can I check if my phone supports eSIM technology?

We’ve explored how to check if your phone supports eSIM.

On iPhone, follow these steps:

• Go to Settings >General>About
• Look for “Digital SIM” or “eSIM”
• If you see “Digital SIM”, “eSIM”, or an EID number, your device supports eSIM
• Then check if your phone is unlocked
• Go to Settings>General>About>Carrier Lock
• If it says “no SIM restrictions”, your iPhone is unlocked and ready for an eSIM

For Android devices, the method can vary depending on the phone and operating system, but the general steps are:

• Go to Settings> Connections (or Network & Internet)
• Look for SIM options
• Tap SIM Manager, Mobile Network, or SIM Cards depending on your phone
• Search for “eSIM”, “Add eSIM”, or “Download SIM”
• If you see “Add eSIM”, “Add mobile plan”, or “Download SIM”, your device supports eSIM
• Make sure your device is unlocked
• In Settings>About phone>Status, look for information on carrier lock

How do I set up and activate the eSIM on my device?

Early Prime Day savings are in effect on Amazon’s Eero Max 7 Mesh Wi-Fi system, matching the lowest price on record.

Prime members can take advantage of Prime deals on Amazon’s Eero Max 7 Mesh Wi-Fi system, with prices starting at $419.99. This matches the lowest price on record for Amazon’s latest model, which supports wired speeds of up to 9.4 Gbps and wireless speeds of up to 4.3 Gbps.

Buy Eero Max 7 for $419.99

In our hands-on Eero Max 7 review, the mesh router earned a solid 4 stars out 5, with the MSRP being a little high in our opinion. But with today’s 30% discount, the Eero Max 7 is a worthy buy.

You can save 30% on the single pack, 2-pack, and 3-pack, so if you have an abundance of square footage to cover, the system can support up to 7,500 square feet with the 3-pack.

Early Prime Day deals are in effect on Apple devices as well, with the Apple Watch Series 11 on sale for $299 and AirPods Max 2 marked down to $499.