Having gotten hands-on with the Loupedeck Live S for my review, I checked out what the Loupedeck Live’s smaller sibling had to offer in an incredibly competitive market dominated by Elgato. While the deck’s feature set is replete with every feature I could possibly want, its execution is a step below the competition. The Loupedeck Live S - the small and mighty version of the Loupedeck Live - is an all-in-one macro system for creatives. You can even stack multiple macros into one command, unleashing a chain of automation that can dramatically improve your quality of life. Of course, this is ubiquitous across all the products competing to be the best stream deck right now, but Loupedeck’s in-built macro profiles for these programs really drew me to it in the first place. If I’m going to be lazy - I mean efficient - then I want to do it properly. Continue reading Loupedeck Live S review: an imperfect creative companion MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Logitech G Pro Superlight 2, Logitech G Pro X TKL Lightspeed review, Best gaming mouse

It might not seem like it, but we fans have been waiting for a new Donkey Kong Country game for about a decade.

Friday Morning Minute

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The original Surface Studio. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Microsoft is ending production of its Surface Studio 2 Plus all-in-one PC two years after introducing the latest model. Surface Studio 2 Plus stock started running out in recent weeks, and now Microsoft has confirmed to Windows Central that it’s no longer manufacturing the device. “Customers can continue to purchase Surface Studio 2 Plus through retailers and partners with stock” says Microsoft in a statement. “For areas reaching out of stock, Surface Studio 2 Plus will no longer be available for new purchases.” The Surface Studio started off life as a surprise addition to Microsoft’s Surface lineup, with a touchscreen and unique hinge that allowed the 28-inch display to transform into a giant tablet for drawing purposes. It targeted creatives, one of Apple’s strongholds, at a time when Microsoft had just shipped Windows 10 and was looking to make desktop PCs exciting again. The original Surface Studio display folding down. It now looks like the end of the road for Microsoft’s innovative Surface Studio, once considered the ultimate all-in-one Windows device. While the Surface Studio was always an expensive and niche device, there was nothing else quite like it on the market. Microsoft has been gradually exiting various areas of its Surface business, with no successors planned for the Surface Duo or Surface Earbuds either. This year Microsoft has largely focused on its Copilot Plus range of devices, including a new Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7. The company also launched business-focused versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 earlier this year with Intel chips inside. It looks like Lunar Lake variants of the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 will arrive in 2025, after a prototype Surface Laptop appeared on a Chinese second-hand marketplace in October. As someone who has pleaded for a Surface Studio monitor, I’m still holding out hope that Microsoft might one day release a standalone folding and transforming screen so we can turn any laptop or PC into a Surface Studio.

Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been saying for years — years! — that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, would be something like a singularity. When we achieve AGI, Altman and others have said, it will fundamentally reshape society. At the New York Times DealBook Summit this week in New York City, Altman said never mind. AGI is coming really soon, he said, but it’s not going to be a huge deal. Also this week: OpenAI began its “12 days of shipmas” campaign with a new $200 monthly subscription for its latest model. The stakes are lower, the prices are higher. Strange times in the AI race. On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Kylie Robison joins the show to talk about Altman’s about-face, shipmas, and everything else happening in the AI world this week. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had a spicy take on Gemini, Amazon launched some models of its own, and the models just keep making mistakes. But before we get to AI, Nilay and David spend some time talking about the world of subscriptions. Starting with ours! We launched a subscription for The Verge this week, and we’re grateful to everyone who has signed up to support us and be part of our community. Thanks also to everyone who has offered feedback, found bugs, and asked for ad-free podcasts. We’re still new at this whole subscription thing, but we’re learning fast. (And if you have questions, you have a little more time to get them in for next week’s episode! Email vergecast@theverge.com or call 866-VERGE11 to get them in.) That takes us into a conversation about the ongoing cable-ification of the streaming world, which this week included Disney bundling ESPN into Disney Plus and Max launching always-on channels for HBO content. You know, like cable. After all that it’s AI time. And finally, in the lightning round, we talk about bitcoin, AI browsers, the fediverse, Intel, Spotify Wrapped, and much more. It may be December, but there’s still an awful lot going on. If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with streaming and cable: ESPN is coming to the Disney Plus app starting today Max is testing always-on HBO channels Streaming is cable now Walmart bought Vizio And in AI news: OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘shipmas’ include Sora and new reasoning model Sam Altman says AGI will “matter much less” than people expect ChatGPT’s search results for news are ‘unpredictable’ and frequently inaccurate Stop using generative AI as a search engine Misinformation expert admits ChatGPT added fake details to his anti-deepfake court filing Amazon announces its own set of Nova AI models From The New York Times: Sundar Pichai Hits Back at Criticism of Company’s A.I. Leadership And in the lightning round: Bitcoin just hit $100,000 Dia is the The Browser Company’s AI-powered follow-up to Arc Threads takes an important baby step toward true fediverse integration Threads’ next update is a search feature that finds the post you’re looking for Meta says it’s mistakenly removing too many posts Intel’s CEO is out after only three years What happened to Intel? Trump picks two nominees who could decide the fate of Big Tech and crypto Verizon is once again raising its fees Spotify Wrapped 2024 adds an AI podcast to recap your listening habits

South Korea's main opposition leader Lee Jae-myung warned that President Yoon Suk Yeol might make another attempt to declare martial law before parliament votes on impeaching him on Saturday.

Russian troops took control of the settlements of Pustynka and Sukhi Yaly in eastern Ukraine, the TASS state news agency reported on Friday, citing the defense ministry.Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports. Separately, the defense ministry said the...