Valve To Steam Deck Owners: Stop Huffing Its Vent Fumes

simple@lemm.ee to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 571 points –
Valve To Steam Deck Owners: Stop Huffing Its Vent Fumes
kotaku.com
112

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing Steam”

"it's a big company with lots of games in its store. But that's not important right now."

What’s Steam?

Joey Jessica, you like movies about gladiators?

thisbenzingring, you ever been to a Turkish bathhouse?

Wait a minute, I know you! You're Kareem Anonymouse Jabbar! You post comments on lemmy!

I'm sorry son, but you must have me confused with someone else. My name is Roger Murdock. I'm the co-pilot.

It’s an online storefront that sells video games, but that’s not important right now.

Oh so now it's the forbidden fumes. That's even more tempting

I honestly never even wanted a steam deck....but now I kinda do just to huff the fucker.

Yo, I got a deal on Switch cartridges. Hit me up.

Mine lost the smell after a month or so and I’ve been thinking of cracking open a fresh one ever since.

Aww, okay. I'll just have to go back to licking Switch cartridges then...

Those are coated in bitterant and taste terrible

I had no idea this was a thing until one day I was swapping games or something and temporarily held it between my lips. I didn't taste it right away so I didn't immediately link it back to the cartridge, but I mentioned it to the SO and she enlightened me.

I fell for a trap set for children and pets.

It just means you need to find the right combination of other flavours to add to balance it out.

I don’t like the idea of a company telling me what I can and cannot smell. My father smelled potentially hazardous fumes, and his father ‘fore him! We will not submit!

I'll steal/adapt a weird argument about eating animals:

If Valve didn't want people sniffing Steam Deck fumes, they wouldn't have made them smell so good.

Gaben spoke, and people listened.

Don't tell me what to do!

For real though, it smells nice so it's probably pretty toxic. For some reason everything that smells or tastes good but isn't food ends up being toxic as fuck. Like lead and plutonium. I've heard lead is sweet (I was smart enough not to eat the wall candy growing up), and plutonium apparently tastes like sour candy. The deck is probably shitting out super fenta-cancaids fumes that're gonna shrivel our sex bits but it doesn't matter because it smells divine.

Damn you Gaben with your super fenta-cancaids!

It's probably off gassing aromatics from the molded plastics parts. Anything aromatic (in an organic chem context) is possibly carcinogenic. Past that its semi-volatile phthalates and other possible additives and light volatiles that may be off gassing especially from the unit's heat generation/dissipation.

Offgassing testing is common (think new car smell...Yeah unfortunately that's carcinogenic too, but we're testing for stuff now). I'm pretty surprised they didn't either invest in the right types of plastics that wouldn't have potentially toxic emissions...unless they did and didn't care until someone noticed and spread the word.

no it's not toxic, they have regulation for that, even valve said the the fumes aren't toxic, put they aren't going to say that people can smell it because some dumbass gonna burn their nose lol

everything that smells good but isn’t food ends up being toxic as fuck

Wondering if this applies to the edges of laser-cut plywood... (like, momths after cutting)

Probably, since wood dust and wood smoke are both carcinogenic.

I still like smelling wood smoke though.

WTF is wrong with people?

i dont understand why but the smell of fresh electronics and cars is soo good. I read somewhere that its the glue off gassing and could cause a mild high and at high enough concentrations or time lenght brain damage. yay

Bro smell a freshly opened pack of cards from MTG or any card game. If they use the right stuff it's like crack. Shit smells so good.

Videogame cases used to do it too

These people are why Nintendo have to coat their Switch games with a foul tasting substance.

People huff freon. This doesn't surprise me a bit. Nothing like a little ozone and chlorine I guess.

Who would have thought that maybe sniffing fumes out of anywhere could be a bad idea

I have an old early 2000s mp3 player that still to this day has an inexplicable sweet orange/citrus scent that emanates from the audio jacks, even when not in use.

This reminds me of the bingo markers with scents. Loving the almond one. Still long after the markers have dried out, they still smell like that.

Probably really chemical since the new ones seem to smell less strong.

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What does it smell like?

I bet it smells like burnt plastic and carcinogens

If they didn’t want me to sniff the vent fumes, they shouldn’t have pointed the vent nearly at my face.

Okay, this is a pretty funny article.

Valve’s response had the same vibes of a school teacher telling kids kindly (but firmly) to stop eating paste.

lmao

New electronics smell so good though. I'm OK to lose a couple hours of my life expectancy to enjoy that, in moderation.

Right? Skip the kidney failure and go right to the front of the line

Well now I'm gonna do it lol

Gotta see what all the fuss is about.

It's been four hours. Steam deck fumes killed him. Everyone spread the news.

I highly doubt he even has a steam deck. He just wanted to put in his funny joke comment and leave the post

Is it possible it could be producing ozone and that it is reacting with the plastic? Ozone is not good to smell.

Electronics release all sorts of non-cool chemicals... plastic related, and flame retardants.

Solder and flux, too.

Does solder actually emit fumes below melting point? I did not know about that.

depends on the solder, honestly. I doubt it would be an issue with consumer/mass produced electronics, but there's a possibility. But if you're doing your own with rosin-core solder (which is most solders,) the rosin/flux can. (you can remove it with stuff meant to remove it. which you should do because flux is freaking nasty.)

Oh, interesting. I did not know about that. Thanks for the info. I will be looking into some cleaning stuff for my personal soldering projects.

They make fume things that are basically a fan with a charcoal filter attached, if you want to buy it… they’re great, if you want to make it… “inspiration”

I'm planning on making one of those. With maybe a hose to it so I can point it out the window.

Thanks.

Honestly, short term, an old pc fan and acheap carbon filter duct taped to it will do it.

More optimally, a noctua high-static-pressure fan and a filter with a 3d printed housing/duct does the trick- the exhaust hose out a window is… overkill and “inconvenient” (unless you’re in a purpose built soldering station and can work it into a vent.)

Probably not, that would require fairly high voltages. It's probably plastics off-gassing.

I will be using that word now what my body needs to gas off.

Huh. I wonder if it smells similar to the heat that comes off the back of a PS4.

Maybe, I haven't smelled a PS4 but I have a Steam Deck and it just has that sort of hot electronics smell

So it isn't dangerous but they just don't want you to do it.

I'm wondering if in a few years we find out that hot plastic emits stuff that isn't good for you.

Surely this question has been answered long ago by science, and could have been included in this remarkable piece of journalism.

There shouldn't be any fumes unless something is burning. 🤨

Solvents and other residues can off gas over weeks and months (or possibly longer) without any burning.

100% the same as the "new car smell"

My favorite smell after baby smell.

Nothing beats new baby head smell, I really don't understand why they smell so pleasant. We recently had another baby (2nd child) and I'd forgotten how nice it was.

That baby smell triggers oxytocin which acts similar to the reward chemicals someone might get from drugs but also kicks off tribalistic reactions in the human brain.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-smell-of-newborn-babies-triggers-the-same-reward-centers-as-drugs-58482/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3029708/

Baby smells get you high and promote warlike behavior and ethnocentrism.

There's someone somewhere right now thinking how can they use this to turn a profit in a probably distopian way.

Isn't that basically what happens every time politicians tell people to vote against their own interests and say it's "to protect the children?"

Didn’t know new cars were on fire

Probs lots of things around us passuvely disperse particles under room temperature, but in amounts not noticeable to us. With heating applied, this process intensifies, more so if it's closer to 50-100 C°, normal working temps for an actively cooled PC. Think the indoors pool, that keeps the room's air humid even though the water is just warm.