Good things come to those who act fast. Yes, apparently something as simple as a simple device recolor can be a limited edition now, and anyone who’s been praying to Gabe for a white Steam Deck better get ready for next week.

Today, Valve announced that it will start selling the Steam Deck OLED: Limited Edition White on November 18 at 3PM PT/6 PM ET. The design is reminiscent of a Portal-themed prototype the company showed off in a livestream three years ago, minus the Aperture Science branding on the back of the device. Instead, it’s got a matte white shell, white touchpads, and gray buttons, but otherwise “has all the same specs as the Steam Deck OLED 1TB model.”

While my hopes for an official Portal device have seemingly now been tossed into an incinerator like the companion cube, the official white Steam Deck still looks pretty slick, and it probably won’t take modders too long to prep Aperture Science decals for it.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The special Steam Deck will cost $649, which is essentially a $30 premium for the white coloring, and will be available “in all Steam Deck shipping regions,” including those served by Komodo (Valve’s partner for shipping to various parts of East Asia). It comes with a special white carrying case, and less excitingly, a white microfiber cleaning cloth.

Valve hasn’t made it clear just how many units will be available, although the company says stock will be “allocated proportionally across each region.” Purchases will also be limited to one unit per account, and accounts will need to have made at least one Steam purchase prior to November 2024 to be eligible for purchase (presumably to cut down on bots).

Sadly, once the white Steam Deck is gone, it’s gone, as Valve “will not be making more of this particular design.” However, that wording does make it seem like other limited editions might come in the future. Previously, the company has released a smoky translucent variation of the device.

Valve recently confirmed in an interview with Australian site Reviews.org that it doesn’t plan to release a successor to the Steam Deck until it sees a “generational leap in compute,” so anyone waiting on a Steam Deck 2 can also rest easy knowing that their brand new white Steam Deck OLED likely isn’t going to become obsolete anytime soon. While competing devices like the Asus ROG Ally X do offer slightly more performance and a few other tweaks, Valve’s SteamOS operating system and aggressive pricing means the Steam Deck still holds a solid place in the handheld PC market.

WASHINGTON, November 12, 2024 – Turkey is the most popular dish during Thanksgiving celebrations, yet there are many inexperienced cooks who will be in the kitchen. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is encouraging consumers to practice food safety throughout the entire Thanksgiving process, from the grocery store to the dining table.

Throughout my academic and professional journeys, one thing has remained my constant ally: Google Docs. Not only is having all your documents available no matter where you are super helpful, but the software itself is surprisingly versatile and intricate. I have never encountered anything I couldn’t do with Google Docs, from signing a contract to seamlessly working with huge groups of collaborators. There are other, smaller hacks for the word processor that you may not even know about, though. Its business applications are plentiful, but let’s focus on what Google Docs can do for students, especially. 

Google Docs hacks for essays and notes

So much of schoolwork centers on writing, from essays to memos to notes, so here are the hacks that will serve you best when you’re in the zone on a paper or taking down information in class.

Change capitalization formatting

Easily change the capitalization formatting of anything in the doc by highlighting it and choosing “Format,” then “Text.” At the bottom of the menu, you’ll see “Capitalization,” and hovering over it gives you three options: “lowercase,” “UPPERCASE,” and “Title Case.” When you accidentally type in all-caps or need to make a title but don’t want to rewrite what you already have, this is a little-known quick fix that will save so much time. 

Use Voice Typing for note-taking

Make note-taking in class way easier by selecting “Voice Typing” from the “Tools” menu. Once you click the little microphone icon that appears, anything your computer mic pics up will be put into the doc. It won’t be perfect, but it will be editable, so let it jot down everything your professor says, then revise it later for notes that match up with your lecture. 

Use an integrated dictionary for papers

You can use Google Docs’ built-in dictionary within your doc by going to “Tools” in the top menu, then hitting “Dictionary.” You can even highlight a word in the doc and hit Command + Shift + Y to look it up right away. The dictionary appears in the sidebar of the screen, so you don’t need to leave the doc to Google your word. Perhaps best of all, the bottom of the panel shows synonyms that you can swap into your doc to take your vocab up a notch, which is helpful for when you’re writing an essay. (Another dictionary tip: Add any technical terms to your “personal dictionary” so the spell-checker stops flagging them by right-clicking the word and adding it. This works great for those of us with weird last names, too.)

Use Find and Replace to quickly edit essays

You can find and replace text in Google Docs by hitting Command + F. The usual search bar will appear in the top-right of the window, but if you click the three-dot menu, you’ll see not only “Find,” but “Replace.” If you’ve been misspelling someone’s name over and over throughout an essay, or using a word too many times, you can replace it quickly. You even have the option to do a full “Replace All,” or jump from instance to instance to decide if you only want to replace a few of them. 

Make a table of contents with little effort

Insert a table of contents from the “Insert” menu if you need to keep a long doc organized. This only works if you format the headings on your sections by highlighting them, selecting the “Format” button in the menu, hovering over “Paragraph styles,” then selecting a header option, but it creates a great table of contents that automatically updates. If information you had on page two ends up on page three after you insert a paragraph of text above it, the table of contents will update on its own, so you don’t have to do it manually. You can also click the headers within the table of contents to quickly navigate to that section of the doc. 

Version History will save lost drafts of papers and deleted notes

You can find older versions of your doc by hitting “Version history” in the “File” menu. I didn’t know about this for a long time, and thought that since Google Docs updates automatically, any revisions I made were permanent. Not so! I’m writing this in Google Docs right now, and the software has saved two different versions in the 45 minutes I’ve been at it. 

Enable line numbers for long papers or group projects

If you are working with a bunch of people in a collaborative Google Doc, enable line numbers so you can all quickly reference portions of the work among yourself. The feature simply adds little numbers down the left side of the document. This is particularly helpful if you’re editing something massive, like a thesis, because it helps you keep track of exactly where information appears within your document. It’s so much easier to tell your project partner they need to address an issue on page two, line seven, than to try to describe which sentence needs attention. Toggle these numbers on by hitting “Tools,” then “Line numbers.” In the line numbers sidebar, select “Show line numbers.”

Force collaborators to work on copies, not the actual Google Doc

I’ve run across this a few times when working on assignments from professors: I’ll open a Google Docs link, usually containing instructions for a project, and find their doc is not editable. So, I have to “Make a copy” that generates the document a second time in my Docs. Teachers do this so they can easily distribute a worksheet and all the students can fill it in without affecting the original version everyone has access to. It works well in that scenario, but could also be helpful if you need group members to do some independent work and don’t want everyone typing into the primary document at the same time. Click “Share” on the top right of the document, change the link settings to “Anyone with the link,” and choose “Editor” from the dropdown next to it. Next, copy the link and paste it into whatever you’re using to share it. Before hitting send, edit the end of the link by replacing the word “edit” and everything after it with “template/preview.”

Take advantage of Google Keep

Finally, don’t forget about Google Keep, the note-taking app that integrates perfectly with Google Docs. I use Google Keep for all kinds of things, like shopping lists and sudden brilliant ideas, but it’s excellent for jotting down notes in class, too. Tap the yellow lightbulb icon on the top right while you’re in a doc to reveal the Keep sidebar menu, which will allow you to drag and drop notes and ideas straight into your document. There are plenty of note-taking apps out there, but if you’re a frequent Google Docs user, I’d highly recommend trying Keep for the Docs integration here.

Google Docs hacks for everything else

You can (and definitely do) use Google Docs for more than just writing essays. Here are some of the most convenient things I’ve been able to do with Google Docs, which usually require multiple programs when using other software. 

Make editable PDFs with Google Docs (for free)

You can turn your PDFs into editable text documents by uploading them to your Google Drive, then hitting “Google Docs” in the “Open With…” menu. I didn’t know you could do this until a few months ago, when my Adobe subscription lapsed and I was refusing to pay for it again on principle, since I really only needed to edit one document. There can be some formatting issues when doing this, but for the most part, I’ve found that Google Docs seamlessly turns the PDF into editable text, so it’s easy to make changes before saving, again, as a PDF. 

Sign documents for free, too

Sign your documents by adding a “scribble” in Google Docs. I find the extensions for Word too complicated and the online doc editors too expensive, so before I realized you could do this right in Google Docs for free, I was printing out all these documents, signing them with a pen, and uploading pictures of them wherever they needed to go. Humiliating. Famously, I once used the doodle tool in the Instagram Story editor to sign a document. Beyond humiliating. To sign within Google Docs, go to “Insert,” then “Drawing,” then “New.” A box will appear for you to draw in. Just go to the menu option that says “Select Line” and hit “Scribble.” Now, scribble your signature in the box, hit save, and you’ll be able to insert it right in the document. Again, this is free. 

Create Google Docs tasks to keep yourself focused

You can also add in-text “tasks” to stay on track. This is helpful if you’re working collaboratively with a group or just need to get a massive assignment done on a particular timeline. By typing @task into the doc, you’ll prompt a dialog box that allows you to name the task, delegate it to someone (even yourself), and set a date that it needs to be completed by, so you’ll get reminders. It’s helpful to put a blank page at the beginning or end of your full doc and add all the tasks there. Google Docs puts a little checkbox next to all the tasks, too, so you can tick them off as you go. 

It’s Monday, the New York Times Tech Guild is on strike, and those of you not crossing the picket line might be struggling without your daily Wordle fix. Luckily, the striking guild members have got you. 

Thanks to the union’s Guild Builds site, there are now plenty of activities to keep you occupied until the strike is over. These include a Wordle-type game (Strikle) and a Connections successor (Connections: Strike Edition), but also plays on classics like Frogger and Breakout. A personal favorite is “Scabby’s Fair Contract Builder,” which lets you play as everyone’s favorite skincare-deprived inflatable rodent.

There are 11 games overall, with the word puzzle games being updated “when they can be,” NewsGuild of New York spokesperson Jen Sheehan told The Verge.

The New York Times Tech Guild, which is part of the NewsGuild of New York alongside the NYTimes Guild or Wirecutter Union, represents the workers responsible for maintaining the New York Times’ Games section as well as the publication’s websites and apps. At over 600 members, the Guild says it is “the largest union of tech workers with bargaining rights in the country” and has been on strike since Nov. 4 as part of its fight for a “fair contract,” with specific focus on “just cause,” “fair wages,” and “a respectful Return to Office proposal.” The Guild’s strike asks visitors to avoid NYT Games as well as the NYT Cooking app.

As part of the picket against NYT Cooking, the Guild Builds site also features a small collection of strike-themed recipes. My favorite? The “Lets Taco Bout That Contract” (Bob Belcher would be proud).

Perhaps most importantly for the workers, the site also hosts a donation button. Follow the Tech Guild over on X for updates on the strike’s progress.

The thing about CleanTok—or any service-based content on social media—is that the spigot of videos needs to keep flowing for creators to get paid. It’s a likes-based economy, which means the people who conceptualize and film all that stuff must continue to contort even the most basic advice into three-minute videos that really tells you nothing beyond a super simple idea.

I usually ignore most TikTok cleaning videos for that reason, so when a trend or hack comes around and is repeated and reshared enough that it becomes increasingly hard to ignore, I pay attention. The latest example is this April video from Cindell Kimbrough, a former professional cleaner, in which she explains her method for quickly and efficiently tidying up a messy home.

Her straightforward explanation of how she used it to speedily clean her clients’ places includes a bunch of useful tips, and it has been written about and replicated from here to next week (the original clip has been viewed almost 7 million times). Here are my favorite takeaways.

Be deliberate with your cleaning

The first tip Kimbrough shares is an important one: Don’t start out cleaning too large of an area, because you won’t get far. Generally, no matter which cleaning method or technique you’re following, that’s excellent advice: Focusing on a single room or even a certain closet or area within a room will always yield better results than endeavoring to “clean the house.”

Ideally, choose the spot that needs the most attention; whether it’s the kitchen, a kid’s room, or the living room, the messiest place should get top billing. That’s a shift away from some other techniques, like the FlyLady method, which asks you to follow a set cleaning schedule every month. Maintaining a schedule that dictates which rooms you clean is great, but if you haven’t built your way up to that, or a certain room is in particular disarray, it’s perfectly fine to start where you need to.

The best order in which to clean everything

Once you’ve identified the room you want to start with, Kimbrough says the order in which you do things should look like this:

1. Pick up any visible clutter on the floor and immediately put it away. If there is anything in the room that doesn’t belong there, set it outside the door.

2. Once everything is off the floor, pick a corner of the room and start cleaning, moving in a circle. Do obvious and big-ticket tasks, like making the bed, removing clutter from surfaces, and so on. Move around the room like clockwork, literally.

3. After the larger items are tidied up, repeat the circle, starting in the same corner, but dust and wipe down surfaces this time. Wipe down surfaces, walls, and baseboards, following the same route you did before.

4. Finish up with the floors, vacuuming, sweeping, and/or mopping.

When you’re done with the room, take care of the items you stacked outside the door, moving them to the rooms where they belong. (If you try to do that before you finish the first room, you may get distracted and start cleaning the second room before you finish what you started, which can burn you out and lessen your routine’s effectiveness.) You can decide when you get to that second room whether you have the capacity to start repeating the process in there, or if you need a break.

Why this viral method works

This technique is about time-saving, simplicity, and effectiveness, which makes it a welcome addition to any cleaning routine bogged down by other methods that get too in the weeds. Sometimes a complicated approach can be really helpful, but when you just want to clean up a messy room, it can be a little too much to follow an intricate plan. (I say this as someone who loves convoluted, intricate plans.)

Kimbrough advocates for a circular approach—in contrast to top-down and zig-zag methods that have proven popular lately—because you’ll see immediate results, and when grinding through the cleaning process, moving in a circle is a lot easier than trying to map out a ski-slope route in your mind.

Bear in mind this method is best when you have some time to dedicate to the task. Although it’s meant to be simple and quick, it doesn’t involve a timeline. Generally, cleaning in 15-minute bursts is best for staying motivated and productive, but that’s usually only possible once you’ve gotten into a solid enough routine that your home is only a bit cluttered. If things are really out of place, powering through without worrying about the clock may be your best option. That’s why it’s so key to select small spaces—to avoid burnout, stick to one room at a time, prioritizing them by messiness.

After following this easy route, you’ll see a big difference in the now-tidy room, which can motivate you to keep going in others. Being able to see the tangible progress of your cleaning is key to staying motivated, so try the circular method when you really need to boost.