In October 2022 Blizzard released Overwatch 2 in Early Access as successor to Overwatch, shutting down the original game. It should modernize the game and deepen the lore by adding story missions. The story missions were first postponed, then canceled entirely, while the modernization was not well received. They changed the matches from 6vs6 to 5vs5 and locked all cosmetics and new heroes behind a paywall. For the 5vs5 mode they removed one tank slot per team and increased the heroes’ stats with the goal to speed up the games. To compensate for the missing tank, more covers were added to new maps. They also introduced additional game modes in the following years.

In contrast to the first Overwatch, the game now was free to play, relying entirely on the in-game shop. The loot boxes were removed, but a battle pass introduced instead. New heroes were part of the battle pass as a free-tier reward. Cosmetics could only be acquired through the battle pass or with real money in the in-game shop.

Even when the original game was stale as there weren’t many updates the previous years (in favour of developing Overwatch 2), the new release wasn’t well received by the community. The change to more aggressive monetization and faster gameplay was criticized by the players, also the cancellation of story missions after launch. The question was what Blizzard had been doing all these years, as Overwatch 2 was barely different from the first one.

The release of Marvel Rivals two years later with a better monetization system where no characters were locked behind a battle pass, focus on 6vs6 and of course the established Marvel IP didn’t help keeping Overwatch 2 popular either. Even today Marvel Rivals has double the players than Overwatch.

Revive early 2026

With the start of Season 1 in February 2026 Blizzard introduced a lot of changes to the game. The first change visible to players is the renaming from Overwatch 2 to just Overwatch again. This should express the fact that Overwatch is a constantly evolving and developed game.

With this, they released 10 new heroes, added sub-roles with their own passives and started a story arc. This story arc will span the whole year over six seasons and is about the terrorist organisation Talon. Additionally they reworked the interface and the social features, especially the honor system. Lastly, they unlocked every hero and removed them from the battle pass.

The monetization is still aggressive in pricing. A skin can cost easily over 30 Euros up to more then 90 Euros, which I find rather expensive. At least loot boxes are back, so players have a chance to get the skins for free.

How I got into the game

When I saw the first trailer of Overwatch back in 2014, the game hooked me instantly. I liked the art style, the lore seemed nice and hero shooters were mostly unknown until then. There was Team Fortress, but it is more of a class-based shooter than a hero shooter. With Battleborn and Paragon, there were two competitors combining class-based shooters with the hero system of MOBAs like League of Legends. The first one started rather well with around 12,000 concurrent players in open beta, but this number dropped rapidly to around 250 after Overwatch’s release. Paragon never left beta, even though it wasn’t unsuccessful. Epic reworked it after one year, a move the community didn’t like. Finally it was discontinued in favour of shifting development to the skyrocketing Fortnite.

Neither game ever made it onto my radar, as Overwatch got my whole attention. On release I bought the game — it wasn’t free to play back then. There wasn’t any story in the game itself — it was only told outside through videos and comics, with the exception of seasonal events like Junkenstein. Overwatch was just a fun hero shooter that was well balanced and fun to play. The games were short compared to a MOBA game back then. A League of Legends match was around 45 minutes in 2014, Overwatch was less than 15 minutes. So the ideal game to hop into and have some fun. But you could also play it competitively, as the heroes had enough depth to learn strategies, movement and tactics.

There was even an E-Sports league back then fully supported, organised and funded by Blizzard. They created teams for large cities to deepen the connection between fans and teams. The plan was also to have the games played physically in one of the competitors’ cities. The plan sounded solid, but after the first years, Covid-19 made physical matches impossible. In Combination with some other questionable decisions by Blizzard, the popularity of the Overwatch League dropped and it was finally canceled at the end of 2023 with a big loss for Blizzard. But I liked having a major league, even though I had no favourite team myself.

I’m hooked again

Some weeks ago I saw Overwatch somewhere in the Steam Store. Until then I hadn’t realised that the game was on Steam. I got curious when I saw the good recent reviews and my search showed that the game runs really well on Linux. I installed it and instantly felt at home. First of all, I could link my Battle.net account, unlocking all my previous skins. The interface is a little different from the original Overwatch and I find it not intuitive. Especially the game mode select is a wall of buttons I still have to figure out.

Also there are many new heroes since I left the game I have to get to know and learn. Some seem really nice and I like that they haven’t cannibalized existing heroes. My all-time favourite D.Va still is a viable pick, as well as some other heroes like Reinhardt and Mercy. At least that is what I saw in my matches as well as in the competitive Overwatch Championship Series (OWCS), the more open and loose successor of the discontinued Overwatch League (OWL). The OWCS is less professional, but still an “official” tournament with coverage on Twitch and YouTube. I haven’t found any German coverage yet, but the English one was really nice.

Another addition I’m really happy about is the progress of story. With each season there are new story videos and comics released to drive the narrative forward. The lore was always a big plus for me. I like sci-fi and (Post-)Cyberpunk. There were the dark Omnic Crisis times, the corporations, the tech and conflicts. But there is also the fight for a better future, the fights we as players do every day.

So I’m back in the game, currently just playing unranked games solo to get freshened up. But maybe I’ll go competitive in some days or weeks. I’m a little scared that the players are way more skilled there and I get flamed all the time, most likely because I’m really that bad. Usually I don’t play competitive, but maybe this is my chance to get competitive again after 20 years?

“Are we flying again” is a question I heard my girlfriend ask a lot in the last years since I bought the Nvidia RTX 3080 Founders Edition. Not because the great visual quality of Elite Dangerous, but because the graphics card gets really loud when gaming. On Windows it is possible to reduce the noise by undervolting the card, but on Linux the Nvidia driver doesn’t allow changing voltage curves. Only limiting the power target is allowed, but that isn’t as effective as adjusting the voltage curve.

So I limited the power target from 320 Watt down to 300 Watt and in most cases, the card wasn’t as loud as an airplane turbine anymore. But still annoyingly loud to be honest. I even thought about selling the card and getting a different one because of all the noise and the fear, that this can’t be good for the card either. But then the AI hype pushed GPU prices to the moon…

Finding the correct cause

So I kept the RTX 3080 FE in my PC, living with the noise. And two weeks ago I stumbled over a blogpost on Medium by Will Norris. Not sure, how I got there. The title of the blogpost sounds more like overclocking than fixing a problem. But I read it and got curious. According to Will Norris, the cause for the noise isn’t the bad cooling concept of the Founders Editions. The reason is the usage of unfitting thermal pads by Nvidia.

On a graphics card, not only the GPU chip itself is heating up, but also the VRAM and VRM (Voltage regulator) chips. So even when the GPU temperature looks good, which was mostly the case with me, these chips can heat up and force the fans to spin at maximum. But the temperatures of these chips can’t be read on Linux and aren’t shown in standard views on Windows. You can use MSI Afterburner to check these or you check the temps on the GPU chip itself. If they are around or below 70°C and the cards fans are running loud, it is most likely the VRAMs/VRMs running above 100°C.

But why are they running hot? The users found out (2021! I just saw it in 2026…), that Nvidia used insufficient thermal pads between the VRAM/VRM chips and the heatsink. There is a small gap to bridge as these chips’ height is less than the GPU’s height. The thermal pads are there to close this gap and transfer the heat from the chips to the heatsink. If they aren’t fitting correctly, the heat isn’t moved away from chips as it should.

Research and ordering the materials

I decided to risk it. Buy the thermal pads, disassemble the card and replace the pads. I’ve never disassembled a graphics card before. Sure, I’ve built my own PCs including adding the cooler on the CPU. But a graphics card seemed a little more complex to me.

And it is. Luckily I checked a lot of stuff before buying. The guide by Will Norris used 2.0mm Gelid GP-Extreme pads for the whole card. I found out, that there are two revisions of the Nvidia RTX 3080 Founders Edition. I have the newer one with limits to crypto mining released after June 2021. There Nvidia not only changed the BIOS of the card to limit mining, but also the heights of chip or heatsinks were changed. For VRAMs you must use 1.5mm pads, for VRMs you must use the 2.0mm pads. For the backplate, 3.0mm is still okay.

Then I remembered, that there are now alternatives to thermal paste for the GPU chip, graphene sheets. They should be easier to place, have no aging and better performance. In the end I ordered a pack of 1.5mm and 2.0mm of Gelid GP-Extreme each, as well two packs of EC360 Gold 3.0mm pads and one pack Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet PTM. My plan was also to change the case of my PC, so I also ordered one tube of Arctic MX-7 thermal paste for the CPU.

Replacement with troubles

Everything arrived and sunday was the perfect day to do the replacement. It rained and my girlfriend had to work. First I got all the parts out of my old case, a Corsair Graphite 600T I found fancy back then, and placed them in my new case, a Fractal Design North XL Black with Mesh. This case looks less like gaming and more like a piece of furniture. All parts, except for the graphics card.

I took it to the table and started disassembling it. Apart from the care you have to take with the three cables, the disassembly is rather easy. The pressure frame should be removed in small steps, loosening screws diagonally in small increments all the way around until it comes off.

In the end you have three large parts in front of you. The backplate, the board itself and the cooler block. On all three parts there are thermal pads and thermal paste. From 3D printing I already had 99.9% pure isopropanol on hand. With a plastic spatula I removed the old pads and paste, then I cleaned everything with a microfibre cloth and the iso-propanol until everything was clean and shiny. Then I placed all the pads on the board and the PhaseSheet on the GPU, placed the board on the cooler, added the pads to the backplate and reassembled everything again. First time, I needed a little more than 60 minutes. I was careful, validated each step and… failed.

When I placed the GPU in my PC and started my Linux, the GPU instantly jumped up to 75°C and the fans ran at 100%. I shut down my PC again and was confused. Back to the table, disassembling again. Turns out, I forgot to remove the protective layer from PhaseSheet, so it wasn’t able to transfer the heat off the GPU. Reassemble again, back in the PC and start it. At 100% load the card now runs at 75°C while the fans are running 48%. So much quieter! Success!

Are we flying again?

I was happy, ended the test and took a toilet break. Until my girlfriend shouted: “Are we flying again?”. I listened and heared it - the GPU fans powered up to 100% again. Confused I ran to my PC. It should be in idle, why are the fans running at full speed? When I arrived, there was no image on screen and the PC didn’t react to any input. So I powered it off by force (pressing power for seven seconds). When I turned it on again, there was no image.

I got nervous and frustrated. I was already working on my PC now for over five hours and it was broken. Did I kill the graphics card? Is this even possible, there should be protections built in? So I tried a lot of things. Resetting CMOS, replugging the card in the slot, using onboard graphics to check drivers. Nothing. The card was dead, it didn’t even tell the mainboard that it was there.

My fear that I killed the card increased. Maybe I forgot to remove another protective layer? Maybe I didn’t secure the cables on the board correctly? I disassembled the card for the third time this day. Cables were fine, pads looked good. Except the PhaseSheet. Not sure how it should look, but I’m sure it should be on the chip, not all around it. It seems, the pressure from the pressure frame is too much for the sheet and it gets squished and pressed out. There was nothing left between GPU and heatsink.

So I scrapped it off, cleaned everything one more time and used the Arctic MX-7 paste instead. Not easy to apply as it isn’t fluid at all, but I managed to apply and spread it. Then I assembled everything again, put it back in the PC and turned it on. I got an image! The PC booted up as it should. I fired up Dune: Awakening again and checked the temps, and also checked idle. 35-40°C in idle with 0% fan speed, 72°C at 100% load with below 45% fan speed. Even better than before!

Overall a great success

It was an exhausting day. I’m used to build PCs, but as I do it only once every few years it is still an effort. Removing parts step for step, cleaning everything, adding it to new case, find best way for cable management and so on. This is just a laborious task.

But changing thermal pads on a graphics card was completely new for me. It is straightforward to be honest. When you are experienced, you may not encounter the problems I had. Forgetting to remove a protective layer is stupid. What surprised me was, that the PhaseSheet wasn’t working at all. Maybe the contraction and expansion of the other pads when heating up and cooling down changed the pressure on the GPU and pressed the sheet out. Luckily I had the Arctic MX-7 on hand to replace the PhaseSheet.

The result is outstanding. At full load less than 50% fan speed while keeping GPU temperature below 75°C is a great success. On the other hand I’m shocked, that Nvidia made such a big mistake on their flagship Founders Edition cards. Yeah, I had to pay about 40 Euros for the pads and paste, but I’m sure Nvidia could get these for less then 10 Euro, if at all. But they decided to save money and deliver the cards with a big flaw. Why?

Some years ago OpenAI released the first version of ChatGPT to the public. They made bold claims about their artificial intelligence and many people were impressed. For me, the product was quite handy and impressive from a technical perspective, but mostly a useful toy. Small coding tasks, text corrections or summaries of given information were most of the tasks I handed over. Whether it was ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity or Kagi assistant, the interaction with each of them was limited to an input field and attachments. More complex tasks I had to cut down into small chunks and then process them step by step. AI wasn’t able to get the big picture of a project.

Don’t get me wrong, even this was useful and made it possible for me to tackle projects, I would’ve needed far more time otherwise. But this approach on AI wasn’t intelligent at all. Just a big algorithm nobody was able to understand anymore, trained with most content of the world wide web, slicing a question in pieces and calculated word for word the mathematically most fitting response. The answer of an LLM is just the statistically most likely combination of words.

Considering, that correct facts and data are the majority of content in the WWW it works rather well, especially for commonplace stuff. But for unknown topics, current news and more complex contexts, this approach wasn’t only useless, but even dangerous. LLMs don’t know, if their response is correct. It’s just the best response the LLM can give and it will give it, always. In the meantime, there are ways to stop them giving an answer just to answer. The confidence threshold needed for an answer to be valid was adjusted higher.

But even then I wasn’t able to follow the hype around LLMs. I saw the potential, but I wasn’t as enthusiastic about the state of AI until mid 2025 as many people were. And even today, I assume around 95% of people only use the simple LLMs in the browser, celebrating the progress and thinking this is artificial intelligence.

Claude AI shows me the way

While these models and services were just a rock to hammer in nails for me - better than no tool - Claude AI has surprised me the last weeks. It’s not a nail gun, but a solid hammer. A hammer that I use shockingly regularly and that supports my personal and work tasks a lot. I’m not only more productive, I also can do stuff I couldn’t do before.

Complex coding projects? No problem. Claude isn’t limited to edit just one file, it could work through whole project folders. Multi-level analysis? Easy. File sorting and modification? Claude can do this.

To be honest, I didn’t expect how fast Claude Code and Claude desktop convinced me. The agentic approach, that allows for multi-level and multi-step actions, is my game-changer to make LLMs useful. This doesn’t make them real artificial intelligences, but really helpful tools. Like an untrained assistant that does the monkey work that you always should verify. But in the end it saves more time than needed for verifying.

Actual examples

As Product Owner I have access to our code and I have a basic understanding of our code. But the ERP code is complex, nested, divided and full of dependencies. To understand an “easy” function in a workflow I have to crawl for hours through the code. Or I just let Claude Code crawl through it, connected with our ticket system Jira and knowledge base Confluence. In just a few minutes, Claude checked the code, stories and documentation, then created a Confluence page with the answers to my questions. With basic IT knowledge the answers can be understood, but there are also enough details to go into discussion with a real developer.

People who know Confluence will also know, that the built-in search is no masterpiece. Even with Rovo, the newly implemented AI assistant by Atlassian, the search results couldn’t satisfy me. Claude, on the other hand, searches through Confluence, follows links to Jira and external sites and provides a great summary to topics. Not perfect, not without mistakes, but mostly solid and always reasonable and verifiable.

But also in private I use Claude Code a lot nowadays. I have implemented it as a sidebar in Obsidian. When you check my older blogposts you will find, that I had some troubles with nearly all notebook applications. My thinking is too fast and erratic to write more than some bullet points. So my notes were short, chaotic and therefore not helpful afterwards. But how would it be with a tool, that could take my chaos and convert it into structured, readable notes? Send “Rework the structure and wording of this note” to Claude and 30 seconds later I have a structured note that will be handy in future.

With this blogpost Claude has supported me too. Not for the writing itself, but for the structuring of the post. I write a note with the topics and ideas for a blogpost and let Claude bring structure to it. If you only knew how often I had to rewrite or rework blogposts in the past just because their structure was chaotic. Additionally I let Claude proofread my blogposts to improve spelling, syntax and forgotten words. But I typed this whole blogpost myself.

Hopes and worries

My experiences with Claude in the last weeks were an emotional rollercoaster. On one hand I’m extremely impressed by the capabilities and independence of it, especially with complex topics and tasks. On the other hand, this AI has reached a level that really could make some jobs redundant. Especially jobs that are based solely on data processing and presentation seem to be in danger. Consultation in the local electronics store may already be better done by AI than by a bored student. But also everything around research and summarisation. Why do I need a Controller who creates and updates reports into an Excel template? Let AI query and visualise the data itself. Always the newest numbers, always the numbers I need.

With creative jobs, I don’t see a real problem. Current AI isn’t creating anything and they don’t understand anything. A good developer will be supported by agentic AI and most likely more efficient, but current AI will have troubles creating sustainable complex software. Also my work as Product Owner won’t be taken away by AI, but it will take over the monkey work. At least for now.

But maybe we are soon at a point where brain work will be done fully by AI, just a small group of people will manage them and give them the tasks. What will be left over? Manual labour and fundamental science. For the first, I’m too left-handed, for the latter, too dumb. We’re living in thrilling times.

Hardware & quality

But let’s start with the specifications:

• Type: Handheld Gaming PC
• Display: 7 inch IPS 144Hz FullHD (1920x1080 pixels) display with VRR (Variable Refresh Rate)
• Processor: AMD Ryzen™ AI Z2 Extreme
• RAM: 24GB LPDDR5X (soldered)
• Hard disk: 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (M.2 2280, changeable)
• Bluetooth 5.2, WiFi 6E
• Operating system: Windows 11 with FSE (Full Screen Experience)

But technical specifications aren’t that meaningful in the end. The processor was developed specifically for use in gaming handhelds and can’t be compared easily with desktop or notebook CPUs. But it has more power than its predecessor, for sure. However, it’s more an evolution instead of a revolution. The 24 gigs of RAM seems to be plenty, and it is more than enough for FullHD, even when it has to be shared between CPU and GPU. The swappable solid state drive is nice, in my opinion. I haven’t replaced the stock one yet, but for some, 1 terabyte won’t be enough. But what got me curious the most beforehand was the modified Windows 11, which should be optimized for gaming handhelds by providing a new Full Screen Experience (FSE). Does it work?

The handling of the device is excellent for me. I’ve read complaints about the ABXY buttons being too loud. I find them crisp and think they will become a bit quieter or more worn in over time. All other buttons and sticks work flawlessly for me. However, there is one flaw in the build quality. On the right grip, the housing doesn’t fit perfectly; there is a minimal gap. Since you hold the grip firmly in your hand, the housing parts move and creak slightly. At this price, this shouldn’t happen. But it doesn’t affect either the functionality or the ergonomics.

One last point though: The device is perfectly balanced and doesn’t tip in any direction, but the display is angled. When you place the device on its back, the display is tilted slightly backward. When I had the device in my hands, this was actually quite nice. But it still confuses me to this day, since you’re used to a flat display from the Nintendo Switch and other portable consoles. I just need to get used to this.

Software: Windows 11 with FSE

The FSE is the first iteration from Microsoft to provide a user interface tailored for gaming handhelds. Instead of booting into the usual Windows 11 desktop, the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X loads the FSE optimised for control with touch and controller input. Additionally, the lack of the desktop allows Microsoft to get rid of some background processes and with this free up resources for gaming.
When starting the device, the FSE welcomes the user with a start page containing a lot of tiles showing the last played games at the top, but then mainly adverts to buy games in the Xbox Store or subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass. No surprise considering the name of the device, but for me the page is absolutely useless as I buy and own all my games on Steam. I also don’t plan to change this in the future, as well as I don’t plan to subscribe to the Game Pass. What puzzled me was that I couldn’t switch to any other page like the library as my main page. Every time I pressed the Xbox button or closed a game, I got presented this for me useless homepage.
With the menu on the left I can access the library. This shows all installed games, even from other sources like Steam and other launchers, at least when the launchers were installed over FSE. I’ve not tested installing other launchers that can’t be installed in FSE. But there is a big drawback, at least with FSE and Steam. FSE shows the Desktop shortcut icon on the games tile instead of a cover. This looks really ugly and you have to install the addon SteamGridDB to change the look of the tiles.

Another annoyance that shows that Microsoft still has to go a long way are the update mechanisms. The plural is by choice, as there are multiple places where the user must do updates. In the FSE, ASUS ArmoryCrate, the Windows Store and Windows Update itself. For other games, you also have to monitor their launchers. This is a mess and needlessly complicated, especially as there are no consistent notifications about new updates. Here Microsoft and ASUS must find a way to improve this. Nobody likes to regularly check four or more places for new updates.

A great feature, on the other hand, is the game bar. It opens after a simple button press as a layer over the game and provides access to the most important settings. But also other tools are available there, like screenshot, screen capture or AI support for games. The AI support wasn’t that great in my tests. Its tips were rather generic. Even with access to the game, there were no situational hints or help.

I got angry over the standby. Usually the device should go into sleep mode with a short press on the power button. Another press then should wake it up again and you can continue where you left off. The “should” in the sentence before is intentional. Most of the time it works, but sometimes it doesn’t. Then the display goes off, but the device won’t switch into standby and continues to drain power. In other cases it won’t wake up again and you have to press the button multiple times to wake it up, or you have to force restart it as multiple presses don’t help either. So you always have to save before putting it in standby.

On the other hand, the biggest advantage of Windows is that you don’t have to worry whether your game runs. All games run on Windows.
In total I would say that the system isn’t finished. With games only on Steam, it isn’t a satisfying experience. With some tinkering it is possible to switch to Steam Big Picture instead of Microsoft’s FSE, but somehow the performance of the UI wasn’t as smooth as I expected.

Software: SteamOS as an Alternative

As I use Linux on my private PC and macOS at work, I have no dependency on Windows. So I decided to give a Linux-based alternative a try. My first thought was Bazzite, which has an official port for the Xbox Ally X. But then I read the news that SteamOS 3.8 Beta also added support for the device, and I gave it a try. Installation was without any problems and I could even update to version 3.9 Beta.

The standby with SteamOS is completely different, it just works like I expect it to. Press the power button and the device goes into standby, press the button again and it wakes up in less than three seconds - exactly where you left off.
But it’s not a seamless experience. After installation you have to configure some stuff to get all functions and keys working, but when done, most stuff is running far better than on Windows. Just two exceptions at the moment: The RGB lights around the sticks can’t be configured and you can’t update the BIOS from SteamOS. The RGB lights are no drawback for me, I deactivated them after unboxing and do not intend to activate these annoying lights. And for the updates I had to create a Windows-to-go USB stick that I boot into once every month to do the updates. Not perfect and rather slow, but better than wasting space for a dual boot Windows.
What will likely never be available are the AI functions like AI upscaling utilising the built-in NPU. These features are in development for Windows, but I don’t expect them to be ported to Linux.

But overall I prefer the Linux experience over the Windows experience.

Gaming experience & performance

The gaming experience itself is mostly the same on both systems. The performance depends on the game and on the system. It’s no surprise that the device can’t run the newest AAA games with maximum details in 1080p with 144 FPS. It’s often necessary to adjust the game’s settings and try out what works best. Maybe the performance is better when lowering details or even the resolution to 900p or lower. Cyberpunk 2077 for example I play in 1080p with Steam Deck preset and reach somewhere between 35-45 FPS reliably. At first, this was confusing for me as a PC gamer. Gaming below 60 FPS is possible? I assume thanks to VRR it feels surprisingly fluid and smooth.

While my PC’s old CPU struggles to push out more than 40 FPS in Dune: Awakening, the Xbox Ally X is able to do 50-60 FPS, with FSR3 frame generation even 70-80 FPS. On lowest settings of course. Tony Hawk 1+2 on the other hand achieves 60 FPS plus with high settings, as well as Need for Speed Unbound. I even have the choice to lower the settings a bit and reduce the power limit of the console. This increases the battery life by a good amount. An extreme example is Hades that I can run in 1080p with maximum settings at 7 Watts. When lowering the settings, even 4 Watts is possible, extending the battery life to over 7 hours.

With Cyberpunk 2077 I have to crank up the power limit to 25 Watt to get stable 30 FPS plus. Going above up to 35 Watt showed no big increase in maximum FPS for me, just the 1% lows were better.
And with some other games, it’s clearly visible that they weren’t developed for a small screen. In The Witcher 3 the text is really small and blurry. I can read it, but it’s not the best experience.

Conclusion

The ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X is a gaming device to its core, and it shows. But it does this great. The ergonomics are superb and superior to the Nintendo Switch. The performance is impressive for the size and I’m totally happy with the screen. Another big plus for me is the flexibility with the operating system, so I could install and use Linux.

Competitive shooters aren’t the games I would play or recommend on an Xbox Ally X. For singleplayer games, on the other hand, it’s a great device and my chance to work off my Pile of Shame. It’s fast to stow, fast to get out and anytime ready. No searching for an external controller, no searching for a place to put my notebook and mouse on, no searching for internet to stream the games. Just power on and play.

With a price tag of 899 Euros the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X certainly is a luxury investment. For the same money I could buy a stronger gaming laptop or four years of GeForce Now. But these options won’t be as easy and comfortable as the XAX. For me, the investment was worth it.

Three years later, my enthusiasm for Ghost CMS has mostly vanished. I still think it is a good CMS, but its focus doesn’t fit my needs. The newsletter feature sounds nice, but my type of blog isn’t made for newsletters. Also, the technical foundation may be modern, and even with Ghost being open source, it is aimed at providing hosted Ghost(Pro) services. For self-hosting, the system is unnecessarily complex.
Until now I haven’t been able to get the scheduling function working, and ActivityPub never worked.

So when I rented a new server on Black Friday with the goal of modernizing the systems, it was the perfect time to search for an alternative. The first alternative that came to mind was WordPress. With the change, I hoped to get two new features: ActivityPub and multiple languages. Both were possible with WordPress, and so I migrated my blog and pushed it live… for two days. Then I was so annoyed that I reactivated Ghost again and searched for a new plan.

You’re now seeing the result. There are a lot of changes behind the scenes, but also for users.

The most obvious one is the design. It’s simpler, no fancy features. Pure HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript. But no external frameworks, fonts, or other resources. If there is no embedded content, your data isn’t sent anywhere. This is achieved with several other changes. The newsletter is gone. I had four subscribers and below a 50% open rate. Three comments in three years didn’t justify a comment system, so it’s gone too. This site is now prebuilt with Hugo, and the server just serves static files to you. Without any interactive elements, there is no need to store any information about you or in your browser. Cookies gone.

Some changes you might not notice immediately were implemented too. The main change certainly is that my blog is now multilingual. The main language is English, but every page and post is available in German too. On one hand, I increase my audience with this, but on the other hand, I want to improve my English. All previous blog posts are now available in English, not translated by me but by Kagi Translate.
Additionally, I extended the machine-generated audio versions of my blog posts. With Ghost I had to generate the audio version by hand and upload it manually to the post. As I automated the publishing of blog posts now with Hugo and some Python scripts, I also added the automatic generation of audio versions for the posts-in both languages. And when it was already automated, I had audio versions made for all previously published blog posts too. But what is a blog with audio? Right, a podcast. So now there is also a podcast feed in addition to the normal RSS feed. Feel free to listen to my blog posts, even inside your podcast app, instead of reading them.

That was it for now. Any feedback? Hit me on Mastodon.

It was one of those evenings when I didn’t fall asleep within 10 seconds. Instead, a question shot into my head:

How does the Stargate address system actually work?

I remembered that a Stargate address, at least within the Milky Way, consists of seven symbols. Six symbols for the destination, one for the point of origin. There are 36 symbols available.

Wait? If there are 36 symbols and one of them must be for the origin, how can there be more than 36 Stargates?

False Assumption

Without a solution to the problem, I fell asleep. The next morning, however, the problem was still running through my head and I started researching on the internet.

I quickly realized my mistake. I had assumed that the Stargates in the Milky Way are all identical. But apparently only 35 symbols are identical and the 36th symbol differs from gate to gate. Because it stands for the planet.

This post is intentionally kept short. It captures a thought of mine without diving deep into the topic.
What do you think of this type of post?

Motivated by the political situation in the USA, I reviewed my IT landscape and discovered more services from there than I’d like. I made a quick decision to use services from the EU when possible. Here, not everything is perfect either, but it’s significantly better than on the other side of the Atlantic.

But how do you find alternatives from Europe? It’s not that difficult, as several people have had the same thought and so Constantin Graf has set up a website showing European alternatives:
https://european-alternatives.eu/

Taking the First Step

Even though there are alternatives for almost everything, not everything can be migrated easily and quickly. But with music streaming, the providers are largely interchangeable. So far, I’ve been using YouTube Music. This had two advantages for me:

• YouTube Music provides access to all audio content from YouTube. This means you also have access to many remixes and mashups that aren’t available from other providers.
• With YouTube Premium, not only is YouTube Music included, but YouTube also becomes ad-free.

Nevertheless, YouTube is owned by Alphabet (Google), part of one of the world’s largest tech giants - headquartered in the USA. Additionally, the company has ingratiated itself with Donald Trump, putting profit over morals¹.

Selecting an Alternative

There are currently four alternatives: Spotify, Qobuz, Deezer, and Soundcloud. The title of this post already reveals my choice: Deezer. But why?

Soundcloud isn’t a music streaming service in the way I’m looking for. There’s mainly user-uploaded music, major music labels aren’t represented there. So many well-known artists I still want to listen to are missing.

Spotify is certainly the best-known music streaming service on the market and the pioneer. But Spotify is backed by many investors from the USA, the service still isn’t financially sustainable², and doesn’t pay artists well.

That leaves Qobuz and Deezer. Both services are from France. Qobuz focuses more on high-res music and has a smaller library, Deezer is more oriented toward Spotify but, unlike the market leader, also offers music in higher quality.

In the end, I chose Deezer, mainly because of the larger library and lower price.

My Impression

Basically, music streaming services work quite similarly. There are personal and public playlists, you can search for artists, and there are recommendations. The Deezer app on iPhone works flawlessly, and the Windows application doesn’t work at all. When I try to move the window, the application crashes silently. But I simply use the website, which works without problems.

The quiz function is entertaining for in-between. You can guess music titles with friends and see who knows more. Certainly not a main feature, but implemented amusingly. Deezer also offers audiobooks and podcasts. The former aren’t as comfortable to listen to since there are no bookmarks. And I haven’t been able to get excited about podcasts so far.

All in all, Deezer is solid. The music library leaves little to be desired, apart from the remixes. The apps are designed for music and do that well. Much is also available in high-res, and lyrics are integrated into the applications.

Sources

¹ https://time.com/7218225/google-maps-gulf-of-america-search-impeach-trump-calendar-holidays/
² https://www.techloy.com/despite-adding-over-8-million-premium-subscribers-spotify-ended-q2-2025-at-a-loss/

What was extremely innovative with pure gesture control on the Jolla smartphone with Sailfish OS or webOS is now standard. Sometimes still not implemented as well as in Sailfish OS, but intuitive enough. And if we’re honest, the differences in look and feel between Android and iOS aren’t that big anymore. iOS still has the edge for me, especially in terms of consistency, but the concepts are very similar.

And that’s where the problem lies for me. Home screen with apps and widgets, a quick launch bar at the bottom, a status bar at the top. Pull down quick settings on the right, notifications on the left. On Android, maybe an app overview, that’s it. But even after 16 years of smartphones, I don’t feel like this concept suits me.

A few examples? I hardly ever use the app icons. I tap on the search, type in 1-3 letters, and select the app. At most, I open a few frequently used apps via the icon on the home screen. But that’s only because I have notifications there. These are my second annoyance. Why are they hidden? I’d prefer them as a list on the home screen itself.

Why? I manage my notifications very precisely. Which apps are even allowed to send me notifications? Which notifications should they send me? Sometimes even when. And then they’re just hidden behind a swipe. But notifications are the reason I pull my smartphone out of my pocket. I want that exact information, that’s why it’s active. And then interact with it directly. Well, hidden… And unfortunately for me: out of sight, out of mind.

I’m not entirely sure, but I think with Windows Mobile, you had notifications on the main screen. Well, there were hardly any apps that sent notifications back then. But emails, appointments, and messages were definitely visible right there. I miss that.

At first, I didn’t have time for troubleshooting. Although the reconnection happened more than ten times a day, it was so fast that we usually didn’t notice it. But someone who did notice was Deutsche Telekom. Three days after the problems started, I received a text message. Deutsche Telekom had noticed that we were having a problem with our connection. They wanted to help us and said we should call the hotline.

To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised: Proactive communication with a customer who’s having problems—where do you even find that anymore? However, the timing was inconvenient: we were leaving for vacation three days later, and I didn’t want to head to Italy with a half-finished troubleshooting session. So I ignored the text and spent the next three weeks lying on the beach.

The problem didn’t magically disappear

Three weeks later, I was curious. Maybe it was an external issue that had been resolved? No, unfortunately, it wasn’t. On the contrary, the problem had actually gotten worse and was now becoming annoying. I was getting kicked out of meetings while working from home, GeForce Now would get interrupted, VoIP calls would drop, and so on.

I had already mentally prepared myself for the call with Telekom. But first, I thought about what could be causing the problem. I quickly made the connection to moving the FRITZ!Box. The obvious assumption was that something went wrong during the move. First, I checked the router’s temperatures. Maybe it wasn’t getting enough air on top of the cabinet? No, that wasn’t it.

But the cable from the phone jack to the router was now hanging in the air, instead of lying relaxed behind the TV stand. The router was five meters away from the phone jack—which was the maximum length of the cable.

A shot in the dark, and a direct hit

The cable is old and came with the router. My guess was that the cable’s quality wasn’t particularly high, and accordingly, it didn’t react well to being stretched taut in the air.

So before I had a Telekom technician come over, I thought it was worth a try. I quickly ordered a longer cable on Amazon and made sure the quality was good. Instead of a cheap wire, I chose a cable made of pure copper. It was ten meters long, twice as long as before.

What can I say? The cable was delivered, I replaced the old one with the new one, and restarted the connection. There hasn’t been a single disconnect since. Sometimes, it’s just a cheap old cable. Even if they all look the same on the outside, a proper cable can make a significant difference. And it can save you a phone call with Deutsche Telekom.

GeForce Now Isn’t for On the Go After All

I travel a lot. Every week, I spend more than ten hours on the train. Plus one evening at my parents’ place, away from my PC. Despite all that, I still want to be able to game when I’m away from home.
A few months ago, I considered getting a gaming laptop but decided against it. Instead, I opted for Nvidia’s game streaming service, GeForce Now. It actually sounds like a fair deal. For a little over 20 euros a month, you can play many of your purchased games from anywhere in high quality—streaming makes it possible.

The “actually” has less to do with Nvidia and more to do with the internet itself. On the train, you have two options for getting online: via the mobile network or via Deutsche Bahn’s Wi-Fi. The mobile network is significantly faster, but also much more volatile. I find it strange that there’s practically no mobile reception, especially when entering and stopping at the Mannheim and Karlsruhe train stations.
The Wi-Fi is more reliable and rarely has a complete dead spot. But it’s nowhere near fast enough for GeForce Now.

But the internet isn’t reliable in other places either. I’m writing this post right now from a campsite in Southern Italy using my smartphone’s hotspot. There’s supposedly Wi-Fi here, but I haven’t managed to connect to it in a week. And the two or three out of four bars of 5G are probably just marketing. Top speed: 7 Mbit/s with a ping of just under 95 ms. Often worse. That makes GeForce Now little to no fun at all.

Local Sunshine Instead of Distant Clouds

The cloud experiment has failed, at least on the go. I also have to be honest, gaming on a MacBook, even with a mouse, just isn’t that great. I could, which I haven’t tried yet, bring a controller along. But then I still have to set up the laptop and connect to the internet. Plus, my games just don’t work on macOS.

So the alternative is to have a device that can run games locally. I don’t want to lug around another laptop, and it’s not optimized for gaming anyway. So, a gaming handheld. The choices are devices with Windows and devices with SteamOS. The latter is based on Linux and is supposedly more optimized. Windows, on the other hand, is more flexible. I don’t have a personal preference, especially since SteamOS or Bazzite can now be installed on many Windows devices.

Finding a device wasn’t actually that hard, or so I thought at first. Valve, MSI, Lenovo, and ASUS are the major players in the market. The MSI Claw and Lenovo Legion are too big for me, the Steam Deck and Legion Go are too weak, which left only the ASUS ROG Ally X, and I was on the verge of buying it. Then it occurred to me that all these devices are almost a year old, and I started looking for announcements of new generations.

Microsoft and ASUS Are Collaborating

Not much new on the market. MSI just released a new Claw with an Intel APU, and Lenovo announced a new one with a new AMD APU. But both are too big again. Valve is waiting and saying nothing at all. That leaves ASUS. And lo and behold: a new gaming handheld has been announced, with the new AMD AI Z2 Extreme. Not a revolution, but still 20–30% more performance for the same power consumption. It would be a shame not to wait for that, right?

I’m not sure, but I’m going to wait anyway. Why unsure? The new handheld from ASUS will be called the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X and is the result of a collaboration with Microsoft. Xbox-style grips are supposed to make it more ergonomic, but also thicker. It will also get an Xbox interface, and the Windows on the device is optimized. That actually sounds good. Finally, an interface that fits a handheld, and more power for games. But how will it work with Steam? I haven’t used the Xbox Store at all so far and don’t plan to. I’d also be interested to know if I could install SteamOS or Bazzite on it if I wanted to.

Then there’s the price: €899.00 is announced or rumored. The price isn’t quite certain yet. The ASUS ROG Ally X is currently available online for €729.00, which is 19% cheaper, and its price will surely drop again with the release of the new device. So the extra performance is directly reflected in the price. At least one-to-one. But as I said, I’ll wait for the release, watch some reviews, and then I’ll decide. But it will almost certainly be a device from ASUS.

In any case, I’m looking forward to being able to game on the go, even when the internet isn’t so fast or stable.