The Morning After: Valve made a $399 handheld gaming PC | Engadget

Valve simply shocked us all with a handheld console. The $399 will arrive in December, with availability increasing to extra areas later.

Looking like some unholy alliance of Sega’s Game Gear and the Nintendo Switch, the {hardware} features a seven-inch touchscreen at 1,280 x 800 decision at 60Hz refresh fee. There is not any scarcity of management choices both, with twin thumbsticks, two fairly giant sq. trackpads, an old-school directional pad, 4 fundamental face buttons, triggers and a quartet of grip buttons.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s simply shy of a foot lengthy. Eesh. Valve has ensured there’s sufficient energy inside to tempt PC avid gamers that have already got an expansive Steam library. There’s an AMD 2.4-3.5GHz processor and a 1.0 to 1.6GHz GPU with eight RDNA 2 compute models. There’s 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM inside, too. Valve guarantees a battery lifetime of between two and eight hours on a single cost, relying on how a lot energy you want to your video games. Given the ability many AAA PC video games require, you possibly can most likely anticipate a number of experiences to hover across the decrease estimates.

While the Steam Deck may not be as highly effective as your gaming PC, Valve is utilizing Proton, a compatibility layer that lets video games run with out builders having to do any work porting titles throughout — you will apparently have entry to your full library of video games. This value level makes it barely costlier than the Switch, and the identical value because the digital-only PS5. Due to its Steam hooks, nevertheless, it’s a really totally different proposition. How effectively will PC video games play on a seven-inch handheld?

— Mat Smith

It’s good {hardware} for streamers.

Elgato’s first $200 internet digital camera isn’t all that distinctive. It’s a chunky rectangular field you possibly can simply clip on prime of a monitor, and it lacks a mic or something approaching 4K decision. It shoots 1080p at 60 fps, which must be sufficient for streamers who use the digital camera output as picture-in-picture. Continue studying.

The movie options three quotes that Bourdain by no means recorded.

Today, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain opens in US theatres. Like many documentaries, the movie items collectively archival footage, together with interviews and present outtakes, to inform the story of its topic in their very own phrases. It additionally contains phrases Bourdain by no means spoke to a digital camera earlier than his suicide in 2018, and but you’ll hear his voice saying them. The movie’s director, Morgan Neville, defined to The New Yorker that there have been three quotes he wished Bourdain to relate, and to take action, Neville recreated them with software program as an alternative, making an AI mannequin of Bourdain’s voice from current audio. The system was apparently fed a few dozen hours of audio to an AI mannequin. Continue studying.

Emojipedia has shared a listing of draft characters

Tomorrow is World Emoji Day, and it’s the cut-off for brand spanking new draft emoji choices. The listing features a melting smiley face (thanks international warming), a saluting emoji, a disco ball, beans and new pointing fingers, and there are extra various pores and skin tone choices for current hand emojis. That’s notable as, attributable to technical limitations, it was one of many few characters you couldn’t modify with a pores and skin tone in earlier variations of Unicode. Continue studying.

Think paperclip, suppose Clippy.

Twenty years after being retired from Microsoft Office, Clippy is again to break your day. As a part of Microsoft’s replace to 1,800 emoji, the one-time assistant will change the paperclip emoji in Office, Teams and Windows. Microsoft is updating its emoji library to make the characters 3D and add animation to round 900 of the icons. The firm mentioned it plans to roll out the brand new characters to Windows and Teams someday within the upcoming vacation season. Continue studying.

And social firms must do extra to cease it.

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has issued an advisory warning of the hazards posed by well being misinformation, calling it an “urgent threat” that social media firms and expertise platforms must do extra to handle. The advisory features a 22-page report on steps that people, well being organizations, researchers and journalists can take to assist mitigate the unfold of misinformation. Continue studying.

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