I used to work for Amazon in a division I didn't feel grimey for. Spent over 7 years of my life in that division, doing great things and recurringly got top performer review status and was even awarded role model on top of that on several occasions.
Then they laid me off in 2023, after my latest review of "top performer" & award of "role model".
About 2 weeks ago a recruiter reached out to me for a role in AWS and I responded with, "Amazon shouldn't have laid me, a top performer and role model, off if they'd like me to work for them."
I was on the fence of asking for one for my birthday late last year for exactly this reason.
What tipped me over was that I took a look at my Steam library and realized I literally have hundreds of indie and AA games that I've never played or have less than 4 hours in that I always meant to go back to.
And that was it, I decided the Steam Deck was going to be my indie gaming experince platform. It has been amazing at doing this, and I've been chewing through my indie game library like crazy, and have picked up so many more that I'm loving gaming again! I can see myself keeping the current steam deck around and will be used regularly for at least the next 5 years.
If you're looking for a portable machine that'll tackle most modern & higher end games, either look at the alternative SteamOS portables or wait for the next Steam Deck (the touch screen, D-Pad, Sticks, and dual touch pad make it the best choice for best I out options for game compatibility).
However, if you want a great machine for indies, AA, older AAA titles, and console EMU, the current hardware is amazing and worth the price
Do they feel good though? Or are they in a perpetual state of fear and believe that there is nothing else out there but a zero sum game where everybody is out there to win at their loss?
What I find hilarious is all these companies doing this shit after all the advancements in programming languages and paradigms in the last few years.
Thanks to tools like Node.js, React, Flask, Reflex, OpenAPI Gen, GoLang, and more, people that are fed-up and have the know-how can stand up competing technology in record time.
I look forward to see what comes out of this corporate power grab. Hopefully there's not a lot of pain and suffering alkng the way.
"AI" text prediction runs locally.
Microphone is for voice to text functionality.
As for the keyboard itself. Ehhhhh. It's lacking UX features to make it actually usable. I dailied it for a month and had far more typos, text prediction broke whenever a number or symbol was fat fingered into the string. Finding symbols you need was worse than gboard & SwiftKey.
I really want there to be a great open-source keyboard, but none actually deliver on UX atm.
Yet. There is a ton of models coming out, some more shown army CES, and the SteamOS news shows the direction of what low end gaming laptops are going to become over the next 2-5 years.
As an indsutry insider, I there is lots of people discussing this and more studios and publishers starting to look into the cost/benefit analysis of getting Steamdeck Verified.
The Switch 2 is very likely to struggle, but this consultant's reasoning is dumb as fuck, and belittlies average gamers as 'normies'. His analysis of why it will struggle, and why the WiiU failed is off base. The average person doesn't look at the PS5 and PS4 and go "but why, they look the same.", they understand that its the updated version with imrpovements.
Nintendo is going to struggle due to:
Handheld PC alternatives that outperform and have much larger game libraries for similar cost.
Pissing off the emulation crowd
Pissing off fans for fan project shutdowns
Pissing off fans of Smash Bros Melee
Joycon drift denial
Stealing fan art.
Failing to adapt to a rapidly changing gaming market.
500 other things.
If I were Nintendo, I'd be working quickly as possible to getting their virtual store available for Windows/Linux/Mac and developing a brand for the platform to feature games that reflected their consoles.
There's a bike trail that goes along side and cuts straight through those ponds I used to ride out to the Silver Strand when I lived in North Park.
Was super cool to see the ponds change week over week. But holy hell do they stink. Not as bad as some of the brackish mud flats around the Puget Sound, but they definitely have an aroma.
Additionally, Washington, Oregon, California, and BC (this one has to have some sort of international limitations) have a climate pact with eachother to adopt emission and climate policies set by the other states/province.
Out of all the states that CA would have emissions issues with, OR would not be one of them.
Thanks for this. However,this isnt the scenario described where the water “floated“. I'm imagining that the wind was so fierce that the water was disappated so fast it didnt make it to the ground in a significant manner.
We're beyond dozens?!?!