Consultants make Valve's office lights work
Also fake smells and account lockouts

The Custodial Arts of Console Maintenance

The most exciting news in PC gaming this week is that Valve has outsourced its janitorial duties to a company called Igalia. They are not actually cleaning the floors, they are just handling the incredibly messy Linux undercarriage of the Steam Deck, making sure all the complex plumbing like the graphics stack runs smoothly for the next several years. This is the unglamorous reality of keeping a successful product alive; it is all about managing the decade-old drivers and making sure the operating system does not immediately crash when you unplug a monitor. Igalia's engineers are essentially the highly-paid, extremely competent plumbers who are now ensuring the foundation of SteamOS does not completely rot out.

The whole project is less of a revolution and more of a corporate admission that the low-level, crufty work is hard and it requires a dedicated team of specialists. One comment thread noted that this is the kind of partnership that prevents "desktop Linux from becoming a dumpster fire," which is probably the highest praise the kernel can ever receive. Valve's Steam Deck continues to be a surprisingly functional piece of hardware because of these quiet, behind-the-scenes engineering efforts, the corporate equivalent of diligently filing expense reports. For the average user, this means less drama; they can continue to play their games without worrying that the next graphics card update will brick their console-PC hybrid.

The Office Tried to Install Scented Cubicles

A new scientific development suggests people can be induced to smell things with focused ultrasound, essentially beaming a phantom scent directly into your nervous system. Researchers proved they can non-invasively trick the olfactory bulb into smelling something that is not actually there. This is a genuinely amazing technological feat with zero practical application in a civilized world. Instead of deploying pleasant fragrances, we can safely assume this will be used to deploy "Smell-as-a-Service" for VR applications where you must experience the simulated stench of a goblin cave, or perhaps to subject remote employees to the odor of burnt popcorn from the office kitchen.

The comments were immediately on-brand, focusing on the ethical implications of advertisers who would inevitably use this to blast smell-ads directly into your brain. One user pointed out that this technology sounds like the perfect weapon for a petty, passive-aggressive corporate environment. Imagine having a device that can beam the smell of stale coffee grounds only to the manager who always leaves a single drop in the carafe.

Foreign Regulator Locked Out of Own Account by Helpdesk

A French investigative judge was digitally locked out of their official email account and lost access to vital case documents after the account was abruptly suspended. The reason: the email was tied to a US-based cloud service, and the entire situation became a bureaucratic tangle of US-French international jurisdiction. The US side simply cut the digital wire, presumably because the judge was looking into a US company. It is a stunning display of power by a faceless corporate IT department over an actual pillar of foreign government.

The situation highlights the incredible fragility of modern sovereignty when the local government's data is hosted on a hyperscaler's US-based server farm. The French judge's predicament reads exactly like an internal memo: "Account was flagged for suspicious activity (too much investigation), access revoked pending review (indefinitely)." The core issue is that no matter your title or country, you are always just a user with an account subject to another country's Terms of Service.

Briefs

• Legacy Feature Removal: HP and Dell have decided to disable HEVC support in their CPUs, which is like the building manager suddenly turning off the lobby air conditioning to save on utility bills even though you paid for a full-service lease.
• The Unending Glitch: A new, old bug was found in *Half-Life 2*'s door physics, one that allows a time-travel effect. It is a perfect metaphor for software development; no matter how far you travel into the future, the two-decades-old codebase will still surprise you with new and hilarious ways to break.
• Terms and Conditions Update: Arduino, the beloved tiny computer, has updated its terms and conditions, which some claim means it is no longer an "open commons." This confirms that all good things eventually require an EULA that nobody reads but everyone hates.