Google Home and Chromecast devices are reportedly killing peoples’ Wi-Fi. The problem, first reported by Android Police, originally seemed localized to users of the Google Home Max speaker and the cheap, but usually excellent, TP-Link Archer C7 router. However since Android Police first reported the problem, it seems to have spread to other Google devices and TP-Link routers.

The original problem was patched fairly quickly by TP-Link, and if you own the Archer C7 router you should go update it with this beta firmware. Then more complaints, unrelated to the Archer C7 router, or even specifically to the Google Home Max speaker, began to pop up on the Google Product forums.

That’s because, while the Archer C7 was particularly susceptible, the problem appears to be endemic to the whole line of Google Cast products. In a blog on the TP-Link website, a TP-Link engineer explains the issue.

This issue stems from these devices’ “Cast” feature, which sends MDNS multicast discovery packets in order to discover and keep a live connection with Google products such as Google Home. These packets normally sent in a 20-second interval. However, we have discovered that the devices will sometimes broadcast a large amount of these packets at a very high speed in a short amount of time. This occurs when the device is awakened from its “sleep” state, and could exceed more than 100,000 packets. The longer your device is in “sleep”, the larger this packet burst will be. This issue may eventually cause some of router’s primary features to shut down – including wireless connectivity.

Essentially the Google devices are waking up from sleep and then sending way too much data at once to the routers, causing them to crash.

Google has told 9to5Google that it is “working quickly to share a solution.” However if you’re finding your internet drops out anytime you interact with your Home or wake up your Chromecast, there are a few things you can do.

The most obvious one is to check with your router manufacturer for any firmware or beta firmware updates and apply them. You can also reboot your router to clear the memory and reset it after a data siege. And, if you want a very simple solution, you can just unplug the offending Google device, at least until router makers and Google roll out an official fix.

We’ve reached out to Google ourselves and will update once we hear back on a longer-term solution.

[Android Police, 9to5Google]

Couch co-op games tend to be more intimate than competitive multiplayer games; when it’s just you and a friend or partner, there’s more time to learn and absorb. Where competitive multiplayer needs to be accessible enough to pick up in a pub, co-op games can grow on you over the course of a few evenings. Not every game that you can play together is actually fun as a co-op experience. Some multiplayer games feel more like single-player games with another person thrown in, but when co-op games are designed well, they can be magic. The list below represents a broad range of co-op experiences, but all of them are great.

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Overcooked

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch

Players: 2-4

Good for: Figuring out who’s the Gordon Ramsay of your friends

Work together in wacky kitchens to make food to order. Overcooked is enjoyable chaos—in a pretty good imitation of actual professional kitchens, one player inevitably ends up yelling at the others in a head chef panic.

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Snipperclips

Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Players: 1-4

Good for: Portable puzzle fun

Snipperclips is a cheerful puzzle game in which you and friends snip yourselves into strange shapes. Creative and cute, it allows for just enough shambolic improvisation to let you fudge your way through from time to time.

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Divinity: Original Sin 2

Platforms: PC

Players: 1-2

Good for: People who spend a LOT of time together; D&D pals

Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel are often overlooked as great local multiplayer games, probably because you’d have to actually live with someone to play it properly in co-op. The games let two players partake in its flexible role-playing. The second player joins in with everything from combat to conversations, so they don’t feel like a third wheel.

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Spelunky

Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4

Players: 1-4

Good for: Any appreciator of superlative game design

Spelunky might be old, but it’s never been bettered. Delving deep into its cave systems with friends is more fun than it is on your own—that is, if your friends aren’t hapless. Co-op Spelunky creates great memories of pulling off daring rescues and escapes together…or being accidentally whipped off a ledge to your death.

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Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

Players: 2-4

Good for: Friends who definitely won’t fall out over who gets the gun turret

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime asks players to work together to pilot a pink spaceship through dangerous galaxies, running between guns, thrusters and shields. It’s frantic, but surmountable if you work together well. The level layouts change every time you play, meaning that your team constantly has to adapt on the fly. It’s a great, unconventional video game interpretation of the fantasy of flying a spaceship with your pals.

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Rock Band 4

Platforms: Xbox One, PS4

Players: 1-4

Good for: Music aficionados with a bit of cash to burn

It’s been a while since Rock Band was a fixture in living rooms across the world, but it’s no less genius than it was ten years ago. Rock Band 4 strips back all the extraneous BS that encumbered the music games of the late 00s and just gives you the ultimate band in a box. Whether you’re singing, drumming or strumming, Rock Band 4 makes you feel like a god. It’s among the most unifying and euphoric things you can do with four humans in a living room.

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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Platforms: Android, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One

Players: 2

Good for: Shedding a tear or two

Brothers is a sad and beautiful fairytale, told without words in a way that only a video game can achieve, and which is much more effective with two players. It’s one of the most meaningful co-op games out there, and one that will stick in the memory for years.

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Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One

Players: 1-4

Good for: A playable Indiana Jones movie with a supernatural twist

Like a mix of Gauntlet and an old adventure novel, the isometric Tomb Raider games Temple of Osiris and Guardian of Light are under-appreciated co-op classics. Different characters give each player a different role. The puzzle solutions can be a little prescriptive, and the games reduce Croft and co to comic-book archetypes, but they’re good, simple fun. There should be more co-op adventures in this vein.

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Rayman Legends

Platforms: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, Switch, Vita (phew)

Players: 1-4

Good for: Wholesome laughs

For my money, Rayman Legends is the best co-op 2D platformer—yes, even better than New Super Mario Bros. It’s varied, musical, beautiful, fun and quintessentially French. Pure joy.

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Super Mario 3D World

Platforms: Wii U

Players: 1-4

Good for: Groups of mixed ages and tastes—there’s something for everyone

It is frankly amazing that there exists a full-on 3D Mario game that you can play with four players. Where New Super Mario Bros’ co-op can be as aggravating as it can be fun, especially with younger players involved, 3D World is a bit more forgiving. Some levels were clearly designed with multiple players in mind. It’s the only Mario game that’s actually better with friends.

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Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Platforms: Android, Windows, Mac, PS4

Players: 2-4

Good for: Increasing everyone’s heart rate

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a multiplayer classic in which one player with a controller is trying to defuse a bomb, and the others are frantically paging through a manual which can be either physically printed out or viewed on a laptop or phone screen. If you have a VR platform, the defuser can wear the headset whilst the others pore over instructions in the real world.

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Salt and Sanctuary

Platforms: PS4, PC, Mac, Vita

Players: 1-2

Good for: Souls-fanatic couples

Salt and Sanctuary is the closest thing that currently exists to couch co-op Dark Souls, except in 2D. It’s a good game on its own merits, but its very obvious homages and inspirations in the Souls series mean I don’t feel too bad about comparing it. It’s best for friends or couples looking for a really challenging, meaty co-op game.

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Portal 2

Platforms: PC, Mac, Xbox 360, PS3

Players: 1-2

Good for: Marvelling at exceptional game design

Old but good, there is no better co-operative puzzle game than Portal 2. It has a whole story designed specifically for two people, and the mind-bending laboratory experiments are tough enough to give you a proper sense of achievement when you overcome them together. It’s impossible to fudge, so rather than wasting time trying things over and over again until they work, you have to engage your brains and figure it out.

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Minecraft

Platforms: Everything, ever

Players: 1-4 locally

Good for: Adventuring, exploring and creating together; keeping kids quiet for AGES

Minecraft isn’t one of the most popular games in the world for nothing. It’s a totally different game depending on who you play it with: an ongoing zombie-killing adventure with your daughter, a creative Lego sandbox with your son, a house-building game with your mum. A lot of work has gone into making local multiplayer work brilliantly, whatever system you’re playing on.

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Got recommendations of your own? Bestow your knowledge in the comments.

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Nintendo Labo is basically high-tech cardboard, so naturally the internet is still trying to process the Japanese developer’s “new interactive experience.”

While some people hoped for news of new Switch functionality, or perhaps Smash Bros., nobody guessed it would end up being DIY arts and crafts. Leave it to Nintendo to continually subvert expectations and out-Nintendo itself.

In all honesty, you’d probably have to be some kind of monster not to appreciate a company trying to come up with interesting new ways to help kids be creative and exercise their imaginations. That’s also exactly what people across social media started doing as soon as the Nintendo Labo presentation ended. The responses were as varied and absurd as you’d expect.

The Nintendo Switch has been a difficult nut to crack for hackers, but some of them are now claiming they’re finally close to a breakthrough.

On January 7, the team of hackers called Fail0verflow released a video of a Switch running a custom program, claiming afterward that its exploit “can’t be patched”—that is, that Nintendo would be powerless to stop the hack without revising the Switch hardware. Earlier in the month, Team-Xecuter teased its own exploit—a mod chip that would allow players to run a custom firmware. And in a blog post, hacker Hexkyz said that he had found another exploit that works across all Switch firmware updates so far.

Finding these exploits hasn’t been easy. In a lengthy presentation at the Schedule 34th Chaos Communication Congress, a third group of hackers named Derrek, Plutoo, and Naehrwert explained that the Switch has “a custom OS that is one of the most secure we’ve ever seen.” The talk includes a visualization of the layers of security you’d have to go through in order to get to the more privileged processes. Put simply, there are a lot of things to crack before you can get access to the whole system.

But as they demonstrate, there are still ways through. They show off a series of exploits to gain control of each part of the system, and end the presentation by showing off a successfully hacked Switch running a custom program.

While these are all promising starts, none of them have been released into the wild yet. The Team-Xecuter chip is not slated to be released until spring, and Fail0verflow hasn’t released any more information about its own exploit. While Derrek, Plutoo, and Naehrwert are working on a homebrew launcher using the exploits they’ve found, that too hasn’t been released.

As for the method that Hexkyz says he used to hack firmwares above 3.0.0, he says he doesn’t plan on releasing it to the general public until there are other exploits, saying that for now he will reserve the “privilege” of running homebrew on the Switch to hobbyist programmers only.