Half These Tech Reviews Have Ludicrous Screens
One Guy Three Screens
Now that we’ve had every possible iteration of screen sizes as well as some pretty novel double screen layouts it’s time to boldly venture to new frontiers. THREE MONITORS. Laptops offer a sticky design problem since people generally expect there to be a keyboard somewhere on it. XBook has designed a dual touchscreen device that folds out from a regular single screen layout. This is horrific to try and describe in text but here goes: It starts folded in half. Opening the lid reveals a keyboard and screen as you’d normally expect. But underneath is essentially a whole other laptop that flips out to sit side-by-side with a secondary monitor, and where the keyboard would normally be, a deck screen, for touchscreen stuff. All up you have three 14” screens that origami up into around 4cm thick stack in total. It weighs 3.4kg.
It has 32GB DDR5 ram, an Intel Arc Graphics card, and Intel Core Ultra 7 processor. The screens themselves are nothing insane, standard 1920×1080 screens with a 1600×1200 front camera and 70 WH battery.
The Myth of Mythos
Marketing your AI can be difficult. How do you get headlines in this day and age? Easy, say your new model is so advanced it could end the world. That seems to be what some industry insiders believe the case is with Claude Mythos currently. The model is being touted as the most advanced yet, and if their analysis is to be believed, it is. It’s outperforming Opus 4.6 by a significant margin in the coding department, and when asked to find exploits in existing software and operating systems it found a ton of zero-day holes in the software humans had missed. So it’s both marketing hype and true that this thing is capable of some impressive feats. This would all be perfect for the expected IPO coming down the pipeline, except major leaks by the company left 2,000 internal documents and over 500,000 lines of source code exposed to the public after an update. It turns out Claude, their popular AI agent, does a lot of analysis on its users, even flagging when it thinks it’s pissing off it’s user, how long people hesitate to press send on a message, and just generally how they act in a session. There’s also a lot of prompts to the model asking it pretty please not to say anything stupid. Anthropic has been doing its best to take down all instances of it getting mirrored everywhere but one thing we’ve learned is, once it’s on the internet, it’s on there forever. Can Mythos change that?
I Think I’m Gonna Fold
I’m loving that companies aren’t being shy about making goofy concepts. After the Switch 1 proved that people are more than willing to buy a device where you rip the controllers off the side of the screen and slap it into a usb-c dock to play on the TV all bets were off. The Lenovo Legion Go Fold is a hilarious concept which I can’t help but love, even if it’s kind of an abomination. This thing folds out a POLED screen from 7.7” to 11.6”. One thing that is easy to miss is that the right hand controller also has a mini circular screen for displaying… Something, I dunno man that’s for devs to figure out. The controllers are detachable and can be oriented on the screen however you like on all four sides, so you can play in portrait or landscape. It’s running windows with a Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor and a Intel Arc 140V (integrated graphics). With the controllers it weighs a total of 868 grams.
I for one love this thing despite having no idea what I’d do with a vertical screen, emulate NDS games maybe? Old arcade games? Pinball? Ok I’m sold.
Rip That Mouse In Half
Have you ever thought “wouldn’t it be great if I could rip my mouse in half and have it turn into a controller.”
If you haven’t that’s fine because somebody else has, and they’re looking for some of your petrol money to start a kickstarter to make it happen. Designed by pixelpaw labs they have an idea for a mouse that once pried apart reveals two controllers inside, Nintendo Switch style. The only use case I can see for this is if you’re planning on stealth gaming at work when the boss is looking the other way. Otherwise it could also remove a peripheral from your desk. Their initial plans are to have a 16k DPI sensor, 72 hours of battery life and of course 18 customisable buttons, including joysticks, d-pad. XABY and triggers and bumpers on each side. The triggers are currently in-line with the bumpers, which I could foresee being a problem for some people, otherwise a very interesting concept. They’re shooting for the stars as well with a holster for holding your phone and controllers on either side of it. That would truly make it the everything everywhere device. Its current design also has exposed pins clearly visible. Those are gonna have to be hidden somehow before reaching a finalised design.
Portable Pi
A company called Waveshare have developed the most cumbersome portable handheld I have ever seen, and that’s saying something. Just look at the opposite page! This is the PocketTerm35 a rare handheld Linux terminal with a qwerty keyboard complete with game controls set above it. You can get two different kits for it, either a raspberry Pi4 or 5. It has a 3.5 inch 630×480 display and all the USB and lan cable slots you expect from those boards. This one’s for the tech enthusiasts who want a Pi on the go. If you don’t know what that is don’t even worry about it, it’s not for you.
It’s A Numbers Game
A review on a calculator? What is this, 1998? Casio can’t be stopped doing what it does, and what it’s doing is a limited edition ¥99,000 (NZ$1,065) scientific calculator. Based on the classic S100, Casio has created the S100X Urushi Edition. This is a limited edition run of just 650 units worldwide. It has gold foil stamping, are individually numbered and are each hand made by Yamakyu Shitsuki, a lacquerware workshop using a technique called tamenuri which involves layering lacquer repeatedly over the course of a week. The end result is gorgeous, and totally out of step with modern sensibilities, because good design is timeless.