Interesting Links for 16-07-2021

[andrewducker]

Birds with terrible names

(tags:birds names funny )

Valve have announced the very Switch-like Steam Deck

(tags:valve steam games console )

Thanks to the wonders of AI you been now be appalled at Willem Dafoe in Pretty Woman

(tags:ai movies wtf viaEatSoylentGreen )

California breaks 1 GW energy storage milestone (and looks to a 'future' 1.21 GW moment)

(tags:storage California USA electricity )

Google Maps' Ben Nevis route is potentially fatal

(tags:Google maps Scotland mountains safety )

Comments

[autopope]

The Steam Deck is one of a bunch of similar machines coming out this year, from the GPD Win 3 to the OneXplayer and the Aya Neo, but Steam is by far the highest profile vendor. The thing they've got in common is that they're all designed to provide a Switch-like experience while playing Windows games -- they're Windows tablets with added game controllers, basically.

(I have a OneXplayer on order, along with the optional keyboard cover. Think "shrunken Microsoft Surface with game controllers, but also a quad core i7 with 1Tb of SSD and 16Gb of RAM and a reasonably fast GPU, and a keyboard and trackpad if I feel like doing some work on it". NB: One Netbook have shipped numerous machines in the past, so are a reasonably safe bet on Indiegogo.)

The field started about 5 years ago when long-term handheld console maker GPD brought out the GPD Win 1, a 5.5" screen clamshell games console that just happened to have a chiclet keyboard and ran Windows, rather than Android or an emulator platform. It was a cult hit, spawning the Win 2, and now the Win 3 (a shameless copy of Sony's circa-2010 UMPC design, the Vaio UX micro-PC family, with added controllers). Add the success of the Nintendo Switch and it turns out that "portable, but beefy enough to play console games" is a niche in its own right. At the same time, GPD (and spin-out One Netbook -- founded by former GPD employees) began selling, first maxed-out netbook sub-notebooks, then ultrabook-spec machines with 7" to 10" screens (so pocketable, but able to do desktop work when plugged into an external monitor and keyboard). I'm waiting to see where evolution takes this platform. Meanwhile, Apple have nothing remotely like it, unless you take an iPad Mini with an external bluetooth keyboard (which isn't in the same league for running desktop applications).

[original_aj]

I can feel a shopping accident coming on.... ;)

[andrewducker]

I think the two main things about the Steam one that attract me are that Valve have a big interest in making the games work well on it, so they're more likely to, and that they have trackpads on them so that I can play games designed for a mouse pretty easily.

(I assume that the latter is also possible on the other ones you mention, but I've heard excellent things about the Steam Deck controls)

[autopope]

Yep. My OneXPlayer is locked for shipping already so I'm not changing it (earlier, I won my saving throw vs. Shiny! wrt. the GPD Win 3; the screen's just too small for my eyeballs). However, if the Steam Deck and the OneXPlayer had showed up simultaneously, I'd be going for Valve's machine simply because after-sale support and, er, Steam compatability, are bound to be better.

[danieldwilliam]

I like that the safety officer at Scottish Mountaineering is called Heather Morning.

[danieldwilliam]

I would be interested to see how the lifespan of industrial lithium-ion batteries is looking now they are being installed in bulk.

[dewline]

This is going to have interesting consequences, isn't it?

Wondering about Ontario's "Ring of Fire" region and the Indigenous nations trying to hold onto their rights as nations therein...and then, there's the ecological issues.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-the-road-to-nowhere-why-everything-youve-heard-about-the-ring-of/

[danieldwilliam]

That reminds me of the New Statesman episode where Alan persuades the chief oil economist to the UK government to announce that North Sea oil is about to run out but in reverse.

And also reminds me that my dad, who was a metallurgist in his youth, once worked on a project involving what turned out to be the remants of a large meteor in Canada. I wonder if it was the same one.

bird names

[darkoshi]

Yesterday I wondered, "Do grouses grouse?"
And I thought it would make a good pub name, "The Grousing Grouse".

Re: bird names

[andrewducker]

It definitely would!