Daily Tech News 12 May 2023

• It's nice to see that some things never change. MongoDB's memory management is still complete shit, for example.
  
  
  
• A month ago we were still wondering if it was an April Fool's prank, and now it's (almost) here: The Asus ROG Ally. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is a handheld gaming PC, like the Steam Deck or a bigger and more expensive Nintendo Switch. It has a Ryzen Z1 or Z1 Extreme (a variant of the laptop 7840U chip), 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a seven inch 1080p screen.
  
  The new CPU is about twice as fast as the one in the Steam Deck, but because the display resolution is also roughly doubled - two million pixels vs. one million on the Steam Deck - game performance on default settings is typically a little slower.
  
  Oh, and it runs Windows, where the Steam Deck runs Linux with neat emulation that works with almost all Windows games.
  
  Impressive piece of technology, but the battery life isn't there yet.
  
  Price is $599 compared to $549 for a comparable Steam Deck, which is pretty good for the more powerful hardware.

• The GPD Win Max 2 is the Asus Rog Ally only more so. And more expensive. (Indiegogo)
  
  Same 7840U chip, but now with up to 64GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD, and a 2560x1600 10" display.
  
  It also has an Oculink port - a PCIe slot run over a cable - for an optional external graphics module with a 7600M XT GPU and 8GB of VRAM. If you shell out for the whole kit you'll have a powerful if tiny laptop, a powerful if large mobile game console, and a pretty decent desktop system... But it will set you back about $1800 even on pre-order.
  
  
  
• Which is the same price as Google's latest 7" tablet. (Lilipting)
  
  Which has only 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. And no external graphics module.
  
  
  
• In this, the strongest economy ever, tech startups not only can't find investors, they can't borrow money anymore either. (Bloomberg)
  
  Partly because the banks keep collapsing.
  
  But don't you dare use the R-word.
  
  
  
• SpaceX and Vast plan to launch a commercial space station by the end of 2025. (Notebook Check)
  
  A very small commercial space station, by the looks of things.
  
  You might even say it's half-vast.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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