Briefly: Valve Reveals ‘Steam Machines’, Swimming Workouts, Doctored ‘Girlfriend’ Photos

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers including: Optus launches Thuraya SatSleeve satellite case for iPhone, Valve reveals its Steam Machine master plan, the sad and pitiful world of imaginary photoshopped girlfriends.

• After years of rumours and false starts, Valve is finally preparing to launch dedicated hardware for its PC gaming digital distribution platform — but it’s not the propitiatory “Steam Box” that some were expecting. Instead, Valve is partnering with various companies to release Steam Machines: PCs that are tailor-made to play games on your television. “Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world,” the company explained on its website. “We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS.” You can find out more by heading to Valve’s website.
• Optus today announced the availability of the Thuraya SatSleeve satellite iPhone case for Optus Business customers. “Thuraya SatSleeve enables iPhone users to turn their handsets into a satellite phone with a simple slide and click,” the telco explained. “Users can easily access all of their contacts in their iPhone address book to make satellite calls and send SMSs, without the bulk or inconvenience of carrying a second device.” You can read more about the device here.
• If you’re a regular user of social media, you’ll be intimately familiar with the ubiquitous hashtag. It seems that 99% of tweets and Facebook updates now include a condensed witticism fronted by the # symbol. If you find this trend as insufferable as I do, this playful roasting by Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake is sure to raise a smile. #obligatory
• Yesterday, we showed fives ways to add a deeper level of immersion to your GTA V experience. Rohan Harris over at Kotaku has taken it a step further by turning the game’s radar completely off, ignoring all story missions and giving himself only one life. The result is a fascinating snapshot of life and death in the digital ghetto. If you’re a GTA fan, it’s a must read.
• As Australia continues to heat up, now is as good a time as any to hit the swimming pool for some exercise. PopSugar Health & Fitness has published a full swimming workout that includes a little bit of everything.
• Back in the day, there was always that one kid at school who insisted he had a long-distance girlfriend who nobody had ever seen in person. In today’s digitally prolific era, the ruse is a lot harder to pull off without photographic evidence (i.e. — ‘pics or it didn’t happen’). Thank god for Photoshop!