You know, the funny thing about the WAN Show today is that we were supposed to start on time.
In fact, I've been in here for over an hour doing my test call with our special guest today,
doing my, uh, what, I don't know, whatever else it is that I do to prepare for the show.
But, um, you know, it's funny because it feels like sometimes the more ahead of schedule you are,
the more time you'll waste thinking,
Ah, it's okay, I got lots of time, no big deal, everything's fine, and then it's 4.30 and you're like,
Oh, yeah, I forgot to record the intro where I intro the topics of the show today,
and I forgot to, oh, you know, actually check and make sure that your special guest, Paul,
from Paul's Hardware, formerly Newegg TV,
is actually using the microphone that he's actually going to use for the guest segment,
because right now we just have a super-de-duper silent guest over there who has two microphones,
one on his desk, and one on his face, and then actually another one on his table.
He has many microphones, none of which appear to actually do anything for the moment.
So, we're gonna go through the super-de-duper special call-out topics today.
First up is Apple's event, the so-called October 2014 event that happened yesterday,
and included all the most amazing, unbelievable, magical, revolutionary technologies that you can possibly imagine,
so basically smaller, thinner, better battery life, more powerful, but basically the same stuff.
Then, also, Google announces the Nexuses 6 and 9, which are, I'll let you guess,
which one's a phone and which one's a tablet, we don't know, because Nexuses are just,
they're like this weird, I don't know, whatever, I lost the word.
The point is, we're getting a phone and a tablet, and they're gonna be good,
and one thing that's kinda missing, particularly on the phone side, is usually with a Nexus device,
it's all about the, sort of the cheap bang for the buckness, and that doesn't seem to be happening this time.
Also in the news this week, Ubisoft just keeps on digging, don't they?
A Redditor, actually a member of the PC Master Race subreddit, had a presentation at his school,
and, wow, yeah, a couple of Ubisoft representatives there said some stuff that is gonna light the internet on fire yet again.
It's like Ubisoft wants to burn down the whole internet, and that's the objective here.
Finally, Netflix raises prices on 4K streams, that was a bit of a cop-out topic,
I didn't try that hard to find another one that was amazing, because we are gonna have a lot to talk about this week, regardless.
At least I'll talk, and Paul will listen, because I don't think he can talk yet.
Paul, you got that working over there?
Let's just roll the intro.
Squarespace! squarespace.com slash Linus ten percent off, with the offer code, Linus.
Also, we got Five Four Club back, sponsoring this week's episode with a special offer,
one that actually looks pretty darn compelling.
Last time around, they were slipping cash into people's packages,
the kind of thing that's normally only acceptable at certain establishments.
This time around, they've got a whole other thing going on, and I'll give you the details about that later on in the show.
So, hopefully, Paul is back with us. Paul, you good?
I muted nothing. Oh, that's right, I did mute you, didn't I?
Oh, there's our problem. Alright, well, let's open up the volume mixer and see if Paul is functioning over there.
Does it? Can you hear me now?
I can hear you now. Wow, it's amazing how changing the volume mixer works over there.
So, Twitch chat, please feel free. Let me know if Paul is an appropriate volume,
because he's going to be with us pretty much for the rest of the show.
I feel like I kind of owe him one after we kicked him off of the guest segment a few weeks back,
pretty unceremoniously after, what, six minutes or something like that?
Well, I think I can understand from a viewer's perspective if it's affecting the quality of the stream.
You got to, you know, sometimes you got to make some sacrifices.
Yeah, and I'm definitely going to sacrifice you before me, so there's that.
But, no, no, you can see this week, no problem.
So, now we're going to have a Windows task manager replacing Paul instead of having Paul.
We'll just have the task manager showing off how our CPU usage is now in the 35 to 60% range,
where last time we had Paul on, his presence was so powerful that he overloaded my system.
Actually, I've upgraded it now, so.
Well, Kyle was here, too. He might have affected that.
Well, we'll see what kind of effect Kyle has, because he's going to be joining us in a little bit, correct?
That's true. Yes, he should be appearing at my door at any moment, so I'll have to jump up and get him really quick.
He said he was on his way, maybe 10 minutes, so.
Fantastic. All right, well, why don't we jump right into our first topic here today, then?
Oh, you know what I just realized? I'm not sure if they're going to be able to hear you when I switch to screen sharing on my computer here,
but we'll do our best with it.
So, this was originally posted on the forum by LordKitty, and the source is a Reddit post in the PC Master Race subreddit here.
So, I'm just going to go ahead, I'm going to add the formerly of NeweggTV crew to when we discuss these things.
There you go. I'll just chuck you guys up in the corner there.
And basically, there was a presentation at a member of the PC Master Race subreddit's school,
where some Ubisoft folks came in. In this case, it was a game architect, an online programmer, and an HR representative.
And they gave this presentation, and then there was some time for open Q&A.
And so, this Redditor started to source questions from the subreddit, and started to ask some, well, you know, some of those questions that we've all got.
Like, what's happening to 60 FPS, and why exactly is this happening?
So, when he asked about the industry moving away from 60 frames per second, the game architect blamed settling for 30 FPS on limitations,
which is not in line with that whole cinematic line that we've been getting from, you know, PR representatives.
Is it, Paul?
Not quite exactly, but I think the main, my first takeaway from this story is it's fantastic that Reddit has, like, fingers or tendrils spread out so, you know,
so much that anywhere there happens to be a discussion like this going on, there's going to be somebody there, like, immediately posting it to Reddit.
That's just, that's just good to know.
Because I think Reddit is a force for good, for the most part.
For the most part.
For the most, it depends which subreddits you get.
They're a force. I would call them chaotic neutral, but maybe leaning towards good, definitely chaotic.
Well, we're getting off topic here, but that depends on your view of mankind entirely, doesn't it?
Okay, we'll come back to that.
But the main point here, I think, is that there should never be a limitation on software simply as a result of one company feeling that they can
either make more money for it from it or reduce a competing platform's ability to perform by comparison.
And there's absolutely no reason for it.
People do PC gaming because they know they can build a system and they can get performance that's in line with, you know, the type of system that they build and the amount of money they invest.
And a company artificially making a limitation just so people can't argue that, oh, well, on PC, at least I can get 60 frames per second or 120 frames per second.
It's just not right, like, fundamentally.
Which brings us to sort of the next thing the game architect said, and that was that, sort of, it was implied.
And this is the other problem with Reddit sometimes, is a Redditor, and, you know, I love the anonymity of the internet as much as anyone, so I have a love-hate relationship with it.
A Redditor can be anyone, and so when they say that the guy at the presentation implied something, well, that's the interpretation of that particular person,
unless there were, you know, 50 people in the audience that all 100% agree that that's exactly what happened.
But, anyway, this post says that they implied that they're being pressured by the console makers to limit games to 30 FPS,
and it was also, when asked about Watch Dogs, the programmer mentioned that just before they release a game, they have to send a copy to the console manufacturers,
who have the final say on what to keep and what to throw away before the game is made.
Why should console manufacturers have any say in what does or does not go into the PC version of a game?
Like, that's the problem right there, like, they shouldn't have to green-light what people can do, like, does Sony have to go and approve what can go in the Microsoft version of the game, or vice versa?
I don't think so.
Now that would be a good one.
It'd be an interesting conversation to, like, be a fly on the wall for, probably.
So, basically, that's it, and then the Redditor also posted that at the end of this whole conversation about, you know, the negative response to locking Assassin's Creed Unity to 30 FPS,
you know, he commented on the console limitations, the choice between graphical fidelity and smoothness,
and also said our eyes can't see past 24 FPS anyway, and then apparently gave a wink.
So, I don't know what's going on at Ubisoft, but it really feels like they have a civil war over there right now
between the people internally who feel like they should be building the best thing that they can,
and the people internally, probably more along the bean counter lines, who feel they should do whatever is going to make them the best, most amount of money,
whether that is through a partnership with a console maker, or whether that is through selling more copies of the console version,
and making sure that the console buyer is appeased, because that's an angle that I think a lot of people aren't considering.
Everyone kind of goes, oh, well, they're in bed with Sony, and they're in bed with Microsoft to limit the PC version, and we saw that with Watch Dogs.
Ubisoft can deny it all they want, but pretty much, we know that's what happened.
But something that they're probably not considering is that console maker aside, the console gamer is not going to want to see,
like, when there are subtle differences in image quality, you know how the console PC, you know, flame war comment thing that happens,
anytime any of this crap comes up, the console gamers are going to try to say, oh, well, it doesn't look that different.
What if it did look that different? How would they feel about their purchase?
How would they feel about buying more games for that console?
Because not every console player is going to instantly turn into a PC gamer if they feel disenfranchised about console gaming.
Well, it definitely makes the PC gaming argument a lot more compelling, if that's the case.
But, I mean, the other thing about this most recent generation of consoles that came out is they are not nearly as overpowered
compared to, like, PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 when they came out.
So, that also, to me, says that whereas earlier versions of the consoles, they took a pretty big loss on selling the hardware every time,
it is probably less of that, because the hardware they're using in there is really not as expensive.
So, that also provides a more compelling reason to deter people from going into PC gaming and buying the consoles,
is because they're not, I mean, I can't say this for sure, but I would assume that they're not necessarily taking as much of a loss on the console hardware as they used to.
No, no, definitely not. I've got another interesting point here that's kind of hidden in the notes on this topic,
but I thought it was an interesting point of discussion.
So, Assassin's Creed Unity is going to have eight hours of DLC before the game is even closed to release,
bringing the total cost, if you want to go for, like, a Seasons Pass pre-order, to $90,
if you want to count all the content created before release as release content, even though you actually have to pay extra for some of it.
And I think we should probably do a Twitter blitz on this, but do you think, given that a game was going to cost you $59.99,
actually, you know what, we should go back and find some old games.
What was the release price of StarCraft I? Like, Paul, do you remember?
StarCraft I, I believe, was probably $40.
That's when I think the most you could charge for a PC game, even a AAA title, was $40.
It might have been as low as $30, but I'm going to go with $40.
Because I seem to remember buying games, like cartridge games, back on SNES,
like pretty old games, for $50, and sometimes even more.
Like, what did Final Fantasy VI cost at launch?
Six I didn't play, but seven was $50, definitely.
Okay, so if in 1994, so we're talking 20 years ago, I think was around the time Final Fantasy VI came out,
if we're talking 20 years ago, something was $50, should it be $60 today?
I mean, let's find an inflation calculator.
Guys, I want you to start blitzing at me with this.
Is $90 completely unreasonable if you can get a slightly reduced experience for $60 when we factor in inflation?
Do you think the increased price might be reasonable due to the better game fidelity, increased mechanics?
Maybe not better game fidelity, because I think that opens up a whole can of worms.
But I would say the increased cost of making a game, and the increase in general inflation.
You might need to go get that.
I think Kyle's here. One second.
Alright, so I'm going to use an inflation calculator here.
I'm going to go 1994, something that cost $50, and we're going to calculate it.
So apparently, according to at least the Bank of Canada inflation calculator here,
something that was $50 in 1994 should be $73.22,
and then when we factor in how much more a game costs to make these days,
is it unreasonable for them to ask for $90 for it?
Alright, let's start going to the Twitter boards here,
because I'm very interested to hear what you guys have to say.
What a warm welcome.
Hey, everyone.
You're actually not live right now, Kyle, but he has no headset on, so he doesn't know these things.
Alright, I'm trying to reload here.
Alright, Alan Hankson says, that's the last straw, I'm boycotting Ubisoft.
PC games should never be locked at 30 FPS, and $90 is ridiculous.
Owen says, I paid $89.99 for Warcraft III in 2000, and some SNES games were $79.99.
Alright.
Are there special edition versions?
Frank says, yeah, I didn't think Warcraft III was that expensive, I think I paid $60 for it.
But then I got like a French-
It was the Battle Chest that had like all of the versions together that they released.
Yeah, but then if you treat an expansion pack like DLC, which it basically is,
I mean that's pretty much exactly the same concept,
then maybe $90 for a game and a couple expansion packs is equivalent to $90 plus a couple of DLCs.
No? Maybe?
But in the past I think they would have gone the route with the game they release at launch
is pretty much what they worked on up until then, and then they work on like more stuff.
So if this stuff's already available, then maybe it should have just been integrated into the game from the get-go,
rather than trying to immediately have like an upsell for people.
So if they kept it secret for you, then you would feel better about it?
Like if they kind of like kept it on a thumb drive somewhere so that no one knew about it,
and then brought it out two weeks after the game comes out, then it's okay?
I mean, I don't really see the difference personally.
I mean, you run a business, do you tell everything about your business publicly?
I mean, even though it is sort of an ignorance is bliss kind of thing,
there is something to be said, if they hadn't talked about this,
and maybe had given it even two weeks or a month, then maybe they could have done it.
But the reason they're probably talking about it now is because they want to have this stuff
in time for the holiday season Q4, all that good stuff.
So that's basically it. They're just capitalizing on the hype train,
because let's face it, more people are gonna buy deluxe editions and extra DLC
when the game is all over every internet banner, everywhere, and in everyone's face,
versus if they wait three to four weeks and try to get that $30 upsell at that point.
So yeah, I guess I see why they're doing it,
but I can also see why it's kind of lame.
I mean, hardware makers, we see this kind of thing all the time.
It's not like Nvidia is not already working on GTX 1080 and 1180.
They're already working on them.
But they're not gonna tell us about all that crap now,
because they still wanna sell us some 980s,
and they still want us to feel somewhat okay about buying 980s
when there's something that much better coming down the pipe.
So you think it would be more decent of them to just not tell us, then?
I don't think people wouldn't be having this argument over whether or not
it's a thing to be done for a large video game maker.
I mean, Assassin's Creed is huge, so obviously it's extremely profitable.
I think the point at which people start to get upset
is the point at which they feel that the decision is being made
much, much more for the monetary reasons
than it is for giving gamers the best time they could have
or the most amount of content that they could give them.
Right. All right, let's go through some tweets here.
And welcome to the show, Kyle.
Thank you. Hello, sorry I'm late.
All right, we're getting some pretty good tweets from people here.
Action 52 for the NES was $199.99 in 1991.
Iron Hawk says it's all about the money.
They're announcing the DLC for hyping the game even more.
You know what? That's a very good point
because something that works really well for selling more of something
is just this, just talking about it.
Even us talking about this DLC right now
is creating more exposure for Assassin's Creed Unity,
for better or for worse.
That's why we get that AC money, right?
That's right. That's why I get so much money from Ubisoft
for my digging references.
They love me.
Brad's Coolio.
I find it funny that AAA titles are so expensive,
whereas indie games, actual good games, are so cheap.
Okay, Brad's Coolio, I'm going to have to disagree with you.
You can't generalize that way.
There are AAA titles that aren't that expensive.
Tomb Raider 2013 was on Midweek Madness
for, what was it, like $10 or something this week.
It's a great game. Yes, it's a little bit older,
but that's how life works.
If you want to watch the latest movie,
then you go to it in the theater.
If you want to watch the oldest movie,
then you find it in a value bin.
That's how it works.
Saying indie games are actual good games,
yes, there are good indie games,
but I think to say that every indie game is good is ridiculous.
Or to generalize that they're good.
There's a lot of terrible indie games, too.
There's a lot of just horrible indie games.
And if we count the indie games that get funded
on services like Kickstarter and don't get made,
then there's some really abysmal indie games.
Those are actionable indie games, in my opinion.
Apparently Tomb Raider was $3.99, so there you go.
You can get Tomb Raider 2013 for $4.
You should probably go buy it.
Is that the one that came with the life-size Lara Croft doll?
No.
That's kind of creepy.
Which one did you buy?
Well, for $400, they better throw something.
No, $4.
Oh, $4.
Why would you want a life-size Lara Croft?
Okay, tell me something.
Okay, we should probably do a straw poll here.
Would you buy a life-size Lara Croft doll?
No, it's not would you buy,
because I have to assume that everyone on this stream
would probably buy it.
What I want to know is would you prefer
original Tomb Raider Lara Croft,
Tomb Raider 2013 Lara Croft,
or Angelina Jolie Lara Croft in the box.
Could we get old-school Lara Croft
with the graphics and detail of current day Lara Croft?
No, you have to pick one.
Which Tomb Raider?
Current day Lara Croft, because she's a real woman.
Excellent choice, Kyle.
I agree.
That's my reasoning.
So Angelina Jolie Lara Croft is not a real woman?
Oh, was that an option? Was Angelina Jolie an option?
You weren't even listening.
All you heard was Lara Croft comes in the box
and you're like, boom, yeah.
I didn't know this was such an open topic question.
I just feel like she'd be kind of high maintenance.
Wait, so if I pick the current gen video game Lara Croft,
does that mean I could control her just like in the game?
No.
Because I would have no control over Angelina?
No, let's say they come with their respective personalities.
What? Okay.
I'd say current gen Lara Croft,
because she seems like a down-to-earth chick, you know?
Is this really the topic of the straw poll that you're creating?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just taking me a little while,
because I'm not signed into Twitch chat for some reason.
I'm not sure what's going on here.
I see.
Stop it, Twitch! What are you doing?
Log me in, please. Thank you.
Stop being broken.
Would appreciate that very much.
I think this is where you and I have to start dancing,
and just distract the viewers while Linus figures this out.
That would actually be incredibly helpful right about now.
Come on, do you have any props here?
What can we know?
I have a wine opener.
Why are we talking about props?
First we're talking about blow-up dolls,
now we're talking about props.
There's a C-clamp over there.
Wait.
I don't even want to know what you could do with a C-clamp.
All right.
So let's take a couple more tweets
about this whole Ubisoft thing,
and then, wow, 46 new notifications.
Man, you guys hit me so fast on Twitter these days.
I don't think games should be restricted in any way.
Where's Luke, by the way?
What happened to Luke?
He finally quit.
Oh, well, you've been in Hawaii.
Yeah, I've been in Hawaii.
I've been out of touch with reality for the last week.
He's not aware that Luke has been in Europe.
He's in Europe. Oh, sweet.
Luke has been in most of Europe, from what I can tell.
Just like Dimitri.
Is he in Dimitri?
Like, are they dating?
They actually met.
Oh, that's awesome.
Because when you go to Europe
and there's somebody else in Europe,
you meet that person.
You meet them in Europe.
That's what you do.
That is how Europe works.
I think Daniel Hoff over there better be careful
with ideas like that.
He just tweeted,
imagine if Blizzard did DLC with WoW,
where if you want access to a particular instance,
you pay a small incremental amount for it.
Wow.
Well, they effectively have a much better deal
going with a monthly subscription.
That's true, but they could do both.
I don't think people would go for that.
But they don't have to.
That's the thing about DLC,
is that nobody has to buy it.
Well, there's plenty of, like,
frilly, you know, vanity items and stuff in WoW
that you can buy, like, in the store and stuff like that.
I never bought any of them,
but I will say that my wife did from time to time.
She got the star pony.
Your wife is very vain, all those.
Did you ever have a star pony, Kyle?
Vanity items.
No, I never had a star pony.
All right, what else we got for tweets here?
We've got people asking where they can buy
a gigabyte GTX 980.
I don't know.
On the internet.
A. Grave says,
I think increasing the price of AAA titles is not ridiculous,
but might start scaring off buyers.
I mean, that's the thing that's scary here,
is for all the vocal minority that's complaining about this,
there's gonna be lots of people who don't care,
and then there's gonna be the people
who are actually buying it.
And I guarantee you
that if it was affecting sales in some kind of negative way,
so if it was actually scaring off buyers, Mr. Graves,
I guarantee you Ubisoft wouldn't be doing it.
So there you go.
Wow, Kimchi Mandu says,
I don't mind the 30 FPS.
I lock most of my games at 30 or 60,
so I don't really mind.
Not many PC gamers that do that.
I sometimes do 60.
It depends on the game, though.
Really?
That's one of the benefits of PC gaming,
is that you don't have to conform to 30 FPS.
You're not locked in.
Yeah, I was doing adaptive vsync for a while
on games that supported it.
I didn't mind it.
I thought it was a...
I mean, when you have a monitor
that can't do more than 60 hertz anyway,
I felt like there wasn't much benefit to going beyond that.
Here's a tweet from rsmith17.
You aren't taking into account
that games sell many more copies now than they did,
and this offsets the inflation.
Okay, you can make that argument,
but the price of an item
has never been dictated by the cost of it.
The price of an item is dictated by
what it's worth to the buyer,
and then it kind of scales with the market from there.
So if it was worth $60 or $50 or $80
or some of these older games people are tweeting
were even more,
if it was worth that to the buyer, then,
then it's probably still worth that relative amount
of income to the buyer now.
So...
Yeah, the fact that they're selling more copies of it
means that they're gonna make more money,
but it doesn't mean that the...
that the cost...
The value of it has gone down.
Yeah, it doesn't mean the value goes down per user.
It doesn't really work that way.
I mean, they're businesses.
They are trying to make money,
whether we sort of like this or not.
And you know what?
Indie developers are businesses.
They...
If they make money, they're not gonna be sad.
You watch Indie Game the movie,
you think the Super Meat Boy guy is like sad
that his game sells lots of copies
and he makes shed loads of money?
I mean, yeah, they do it out of passion, sure,
but that doesn't mean they don't want to make money
and they're not gonna try to make money.
What about Notch?
I'm sorry?
What about Notch?
What about Notch?
He's made more money than like...
probably everyone in the town I'm in combined.
But he is also taking a step
that will potentially make him a lot less money.
Right, but he has lots of money already.
So he's reached a point of moneyness
where it doesn't really make a difference anymore.
It kind of feels like that.
All right, so why don't we move on to our next topic here,
which is fast-charging batteries with a 20-year lifetime.
This was posted by Michev on the forum,
and the original article is from Engadget.com.
I'm just gonna go ahead and pop that up for you guys to enjoy.
But this looks freaking promising.
Apparently, the technology is not super expensive to produce,
and we could be looking at batteries that can charge up to 70%,
and these would be new lithium-ion batteries,
up to 70% in two minutes.
That's ridiculous.
Yeah, I mean...
Wow.
I mean, okay, here, question for you guys,
and you can debate amongst yourselves,
but what's more important to you, long battery life
or fast-charging with the same battery life we have today?
I'll go for long battery life
because I'm pretty good about plugging in my phone every night.
If my phone can last all day with heavy use,
then it's gonna get a full charge every night,
so yeah, that would be it for me.
Fast-charging is nice, but at the end of the day,
you still need something to charge it with.
I would prefer just having a self-contained battery
as long as it does, regardless of where I am
or if I have an AC power outlet near me.
I guess it's a lifestyle thing, too, though,
because if you go to work where you have an outlet next to you,
like you work at a desk, then fast-charging is great.
You just give it a zap whenever you need it.
However, if you go to work where you're on the go all day
and you're moving around and you're using your phone a lot,
then I guess longer battery life is more useful,
but either way, this will enable potentially devices
with larger batteries to also be charged much more quickly.
So if we had, you know, I usually assume
when some research comes out
and they talk about what percentage they can charge
in X number of minutes for, like, a phone,
I usually assume they're talking about an iPhone,
so we can say somewhere in the 1,800 to 2,100 milliamp hour range.
So if you had a tablet,
let's say a 6,000 milliamp hour battery or 5,000...
Oh, no, they don't go up to that high, do they?
What are they, usually like 4,000 to 6,000,
somewhere in that range?
I think 3 to 5, 3 to 5, yeah.
Okay, well, whatever.
So the point is we could maybe charge that to 70%
in 10 minutes or 5 minutes or 6 minutes
or whatever the case may be, so pretty darn exciting.
So they're using titanium dioxide nanotubes for the anode
rather than graphite,
which speeds up the battery's chemical reactions,
offering 10,000 charging cycles rather than the usual 500.
So would that be something that's more important to you
than the fast charging,
the fact that now you can get 20 times longer life out of it,
especially now that so many devices
don't have removable batteries?
When I first was looking at this story earlier,
I was very excited initially
because I'm always happy
when I see battery technology improvements
because I think that's just something
that's lagged behind so badly.
But my secondary reaction was
I hope it doesn't have some sort of negative impact.
I hope each one of these that they create
doesn't kill 10 baby seals or something like that.
So yeah, that's a pretty big factor for me at this point
when it goes into, especially for technology,
is going to be the environmental impact
it might have as well.
So the think of the children factor?
Think of the children, yes.
Think of the seals.
Our future.
But yeah, I mean, if you have something
and it's going to last 10,000 charging cycles rather than 500,
it should last a lot longer.
Hopefully maybe the device could last longer.
I mean, another discussion is
if we're reaching a point of capability
with the technology and the speed
where devices might start lasting longer
rather than being replaced in one or two years.
Timing for this could be perfect then.
Yeah.
So you get a device that isn't really getting
that much faster every generation,
so you don't really feel the need to replace it so often.
I mean, something like this
could be great for your Project Aura phone.
So you could buy yourself a quick charge module
versus the standard battery module
and make that thing last freaking forever.
I mean, once you have a portable device
that can do, you know, say, 4K resolution
on a handheld display and have 48 hours of battery life
and, you know, apart from gameplay,
what really stressful thing do you do with the phone?
So as long as it's not physically wearing out or bending,
then it should be able to last a reasonable amount of time.
Question for you is do we really even need 4K
on a mobile display?
I mean, have you used the LG G3?
No, I haven't.
I don't really think so.
I think it's overkill.
I think the retina displays
and the small devices are pretty absurd a lot of the time.
I mean...
It's a pixel race.
It's a pixel race for smartphones, I feel,
and I wish there was more of a pixel race
for PC monitors because, you know,
like the Nexus 6 is coming out,
and it's got a 2560 by 1440 screen,
and most people that have monitors are still running 1080,
which is... I find that ridiculous
that a 5.5-inch screen or a 6-inch screen,
whatever, has a higher resolution than the monitor
that you're using every day for work or for gaming and whatnot.
When the funniest thing about it is, you know what?
I've been using the iPhone 6 for over a week now,
and it never occurred to me for even a second
that the screen was low-res
because it really, really doesn't matter.
Like, relatively low-res.
It's still retina or whatever,
but it's not as high-res as the One M8
that I was using right before it, so yeah.
It's just funny you mention that.
Not only can I not tell the difference
between 1440p and 1080,
but I couldn't even tell the difference
stepping down to whatever this is
because it's not 1080.
I mean, there's definitely something to be said
for getting up to that point where, you know,
1080 and beyond, because Steve's Windows phone
that he has, he was showing to me,
and that was my first thing I noticed about it.
I was like, oh, this has, like, an 800x600 display
on it or something, which is why it cost, like, 60 bucks.
But yeah, I mean, once you get to a certain amount
of pixel density, I think it really doesn't matter
for a handheld device.
All right, so speaking of handheld devices,
why don't we jump into Android 5.0 Lollipop
and the Nexus 9 and the Nexus 6?
So, guys, start hitting us on Twitter,
so it's, oh, I can't really point over there very well.
There we go.
LinusTech on Twitter,
want to start hearing from you guys
about Android 5.0 Lollipop, Nexus 9, and Nexus 6.
What are your thoughts?
We will go through some of those,
but first let's sort of briefly run through
exactly what's going on here.
So Android 5.0 is coming in the next few months
for the Nexus 5, 7, 10, and Google Play Edition devices
as well as the upcoming 6 and 9.
So we now have Nexus's 5, 6, 7, 9, 10.
Wow, all at the same time. Amazing.
What happened to 8?
That's all I've ever wanted was an 8-inch Google device.
Yeah, it would be great.
I would rate it 8 out of 8, mate.
Do you, Santa?
I think my wife has one of those.
All right, so the Nexus Player streaming media device
is also getting it.
Its biggest new feature is Material Design.
It overhauls almost all of the GUI.
This is the biggest Android change
since Ice Cream Sandwich back in 2011.
It has new refined animations, a new color palette,
revamped multitasking, voice controls,
and also brings 5,000 new APIs for developers to tap into
and lets multiple devices and various form factors
work together better.
There's improved syncing options,
new notification settings and controls,
improved battery saving,
something that I would be really happy to see
because being back on iOS again
has actually been super-duper nice
because particularly when the phone is idle,
the power management is just so much better.
Multiple user accounts,
something I guess we should have seen coming.
I mean, as someone with a family,
I'm not necessarily gonna buy my 5-year-old a phone,
but I also don't want him running a mock on my OS
doing all of my things
when it would be better if he just had his own playground.
And some third parties have added stuff like this already,
so we've got, you know, HTC has a kid mode,
if I recall correctly,
and I think Samsung does as well.
So now you can get it without subjecting yourself
to TouchWiz or using Sense.
What else is there in here?
Multiple user accounts.
Yeah, so that's basically it.
Now we can get into the hardware of the phone.
So, Paul, want to run us through the Nexus 6?
Maybe give us your thoughts?
Yeah, so this is something that we were discussing a little bit
before the show started,
but I'm looking for a new phone soon.
Actually, I have a new contract starting,
and when I saw the Nexus 6, I was...
Oh, sorry, Kyle.
It's okay.
There you go.
I want to read it, too.
When I saw the Nexus 6, I was like,
ooh, like, I want to get a new phone.
I don't care really which phone I get at this point,
but I want it to be a new one.
So it gave me some consideration.
Yeah, 5.96 inches, 2560 by 1440 panel,
which we were just talking about.
Not a huge difference, but, hey, it's a nice screen, I'm sure.
13-megapixel camera.
I like the 4K recording.
I've been using my phone at times to do random video recording
here and there and being able to record at 4K.
That's pretty nice.
2-megapixel front-facing camera for the selfies.
I think it's got an f-stop of 2 as well,
so it's got a pretty wide aperture,
which means you can get some good low-lighting performance
as well as that nice defocused background.
Go for a more cinematic feel.
More cinematic?
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
So you're worried about 4K effects on selfies?
Really?
Of course.
It's trending.
I hate you guys.
It's trending right now.
What can I say?
Look at the filters that they have on Instagram.
That's one of the popular ones
where they put the depth of field.
You blur everything except the subject.
Take your social media to the next level, Linus.
I'm very excited about that.
Indulge.
All right, 3,220 milliamp-hour battery is something that's,
yeah, whatever.
That's been my biggest complaint recently, my phone.
Battery's really, really sucking lately
in the last six months of its existence.
Mine too.
So yeah, hopefully the larger battery
combined with the lollipop features of,
particularly saving power
when it's right about to shut off.
That's what I hate.
My phone, battery runs out,
and then I plug it in,
and then I have to,
like if I'm going to bed
and I use my phone as an alarm
and the battery dies
and I go to plug it in,
I have to wait for five plus minutes
to get enough charge to turn it on
so that my alarm will go off.
That's an annoyance that's happened to me
several times in the past few months.
You know what's funny is,
yeah, I mean, this looks like,
this looks like Google catching up
to what other guys were already doing,
like Samsung had that high endurance mode
or whatever they were calling it
where your phone could last for like
multiple days on a few percent charge
because it just like didn't do basically anything.
It was like two-color display
and all that kind of stuff.
And it's funny that you mentioned
that problem with your phone
because I don't know about other manufacturers,
but HTC actually reserves enough battery
to wake itself up to have an alarm go off
even if it dies in the middle of the night.
So you might want to find a manufacturer
whose phone does that.
I do love HTC,
or there have been many HTC phones
that I've enjoyed in the past.
My wife has the one
and she's really enjoyed it
and she uses it to play audiobooks.
So thoughts on the $649.99 unlocked price point, though?
I was disappointed.
That's steep.
Yeah, so it's too early to say now, too,
but there was also a rumor that day,
I think the day of the launch of these,
when they first started discussing them publicly,
that I think AT&T had posted the pre-order
or something accidentally for the Nexus 6
and it was like 50 bucks on contract.
And I'm starting to think that might have been
just a mistake and probably not actually going to be
what they're going to charge for it.
Because $650 with contract is still probably seems to me
like a $100 to $200 upfront investment they're going to ask,
especially when it's brand new.
Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed.
I mean, I don't know that this has been confirmed or anything,
but I would suspect based on the fact
that there's not much actual spec difference now
between the Nexus 5 and the Nexus 6,
we're going to see those two devices coexist.
In addition to that, I mean,
even Apple has finally acknowledged
that there isn't just one size fits all
for phone physical sizes.
So when I first heard that the Nexus 6
was going to be a six-inch device,
or whatever it is, 5.9, I think,
when I first heard that it was going to be a six-inch class device,
I kind of went, what are they, high?
I mean, yeah, I know that the Note series does great
and I know that Samsung basically created the hype
around this phablet category that is doing incredibly well
with even Apple jumping on board,
but for that to be their only device,
because that's what we've seen from Google in the past.
There's the Nexus device,
and then there's Google Play editions of, like, other stuff.
But I think just for the first time,
we're going to get the Nexus 5 to just kind of continue forever,
or at least for quite a while,
and then the Nexus 6 is going to be in addition to that.
So I think the fact that it's priced higher
makes more sense that way,
because if they're still going to offer a value option,
and the Nexus 5 is still a great device,
then they don't have to worry so much
about making the Nexus 6 so competitively priced.
And I've got to wonder if there's pressure on them
from the handset makers,
because it was a few months ago,
but we saw a report that I think Apple and Samsung
were the only profitable handset divisions
within their respective companies.
So, you know, guys like HTC, who are not doing very well,
LG's mobile division has been doing better,
but even then, I still don't think
it's, like, an exceptional moneymaker for them.
Maybe, you know, Google jumping in and kind of going,
yay, phones should be commodity cheap, like, super cheap,
was upsetting their partners.
I mean, is it something where you think
if they get enough investment in the platform
that's similar to, like, how consoles are sold,
that they might be able to provide more of an incentive
to manufacturers to selling the devices for cheaper?
Like, could that be a business tactic
that they could use to take on Apple
and their kind of what they then could position
as, like, overpriced devices?
No, I don't think so, because the...
It's in no one's... On the business side of things,
it's in no one's best interest to lower the ASP of a category.
The only time you're gonna lower your average sell price
is to try to nickel and dime a competitor.
So, for Google, why do they care?
Because they've already got the lion's share
of the mobile market with Apple in, like,
decisively in second now and Microsoft
just barely even a player and BlackBerry barely even that.
So it's not like if they make high-end devices cheaper,
they're likely to sell more Android devices in general
or gain more market share,
and the way Google's making their money
is through the data mining that they're doing
as well as through Google Play Store purchases,
which maybe they could buy slightly higher-end games
for their phones, but let's face it.
People who are gonna buy a, you know,
a $49 device off of a Chinese website
are probably not buying $9 apps anyway,
so that customer is of no benefit to Google
just because they...
There are no additional benefit to Google
just because they have higher-end phone hardware.
Kyle?
I think... So do you think...
Because the Nexus 5 was not anywhere near
the retail price of the Nexus 6.
It's like 300 bucks, isn't it?
Yeah.
If that's such a wide gap going from 5 to 6,
but the specs aren't really that much different,
are you assuming that Google's gonna be releasing
some kind of lower-end, more affordable price point option
in the future?
Do you think that's their strategy
behind such a high price for the Nexus 6?
No, I think it'll just still be the Nexus 5.
I think they're just not gonna have it go away,
or they're gonna leave it for now and see how it goes.
Let's go to Twitter,
because I kind of said that I would listen to people
on Twitter about this.
So here we go.
Ernie, considering Shield tablet,
can you suggest comparable talents
in terms of value and features?
Not really.
If you want the features a Shield tablet has,
then you're kind of stuck with the Shield tablet.
Irena says, thinking of getting a new phone,
Nexus 6 is not gonna be it
because it's too expensive and too big.
Amir says it's too big.
Max size for me is 5 inch.
Lollipop tried too hard with material design.
It's overdone.
Interesting.
Phantom Fish says, I honestly think it looks similar to iOS.
Bottom swipe up, graphics, respond to messages from taskbar, etc.
Micah, I have a Nexus 7, but I don't have a smartphone.
I think the Nexus 6 is too big.
If I were to buy it, I could just use the 7.
And that's a good point where the line is blurred.
I mean, Google's last-gen tablet device
is now similar to the size of their current-gen phone device.
Oh yeah, we should probably very briefly go through what the Nexus 9 is.
So it's 8.9 inch, 2048 by 1536 IPS display.
That's a 4 by 3 aspect ratio,
for those of you who didn't pick up on that.
So interesting, acknowledging that Apple is right about that.
Very interesting.
8 megapixel rear camera, 1.6 megapixel front camera,
dual front-facing speakers.
Tegra K1, assumed to be the 2.5 gigahertz dual-core model,
though not confirmed, 64-bit processor,
with 16 or 32 gigs of storage, aluminum construction,
and going to be made by HTC.
Pricing looks a little bit more reasonable here.
$399 for 16 gig, $479 for 32 gig,
and $599 for 32 gig with LTE.
But again, not Nexus aggressive.
I mean, that was the whole thing with the Nexus 7 is,
if I recall correctly, that thing launched at what?
$199.99 was the original Nexus 7 price?
Generation 1, I believe so, yeah.
One of them might have been $250.
Because that was the whole concept, bringing the Google,
you know, stock Android experience to the masses.
That was what made them so appealing.
Well, now, yeah, we get a couple more inches,
but is that really worth the couple hundred dollars extra we're paying?
Hard to say.
Nexus 9 versus Shield Tablet.
Oh, Shield Tablet for sure, for me.
If you're a gamer, you got to go for the Shield Tablet.
It has the quad core.
It has the stylus.
Build quality is not metal, but solid.
And it has Game Stream.
If you're going to game on it at all,
then having Game Stream from your GeForce PC
is a pretty good thing to have.
All right, Jonah the Boss.
The price is not reasonable.
Got it.
Oliver says, so is this Android silver,
but maybe they kept the Nexus name.
Yeah, there were rumors about Android silver.
Maybe silver means not cheap anymore,
but basically the same thing.
Kimchi, loved Nexus for the low price point.
After I heard the price, my heart sank down to the ground.
Phantom Fish, I think we saw this tweet before.
Nexus 5 is max size for my largest hands.
Nexus 6 is too big.
Wow, there's not a whole lot of positivity
about this on Twitter here, is there?
I think people enjoyed the price of the Nexus 5 so much.
They were just really expecting, oh, they're
going to come out with another phone,
and it's going to be available, and I'm
going to be able to buy it with no contract for $300 or $400.
Of all the Nexus devices, really.
I bought my second generation Nexus 7 for $220,
and it wasn't even on sale.
And if you think about it, the Nexus 6
is basically just like a Nexus 7, except it's a phone,
and it's one inch smaller.
But people who are getting the Nexus 6
will virtually have no reason at all
to buy a Nexus 7 tablet, especially when it's
a third of the price.
If I recall correctly.
So on the phone side, we might keep Nexus 5 around
for quite a while, but on the tablet side,
it looks like the entry level Nexus tablet
is going to be $400.
Oliver says, looking forward to 60 FPS animations.
Not looking forward to apps that don't support material design.
Inconsistency in apps is ew.
That is a very good point.
Nexus 6 is most definitely flagship,
but what about makes it more expensive than the Nexus 9
tablet?
That's an interesting point.
That it can fit in your pocket, barely.
No, that the price is so much more than the Nexus 9 tablet.
What are the hardware differences here, exactly?
There's less, right?
Actually, I have to do math to figure that out.
The pixel density isn't as high.
There's definitely less pixel density,
unless it's lower overall resolution on the Nexus 9,
so the display itself could be a pretty decent factor.
Yeah, but the funny thing about that is if you've ever shopped
for replacement displays for a phone,
I bought one for a Droid DNA not that long ago.
They're not expensive.
Even buying them on eBay as an end user,
so there's basically negligible sales volume,
and you have to pay shipping.
I think I got it for $70 or $80 shipped to me,
so I'm sure Google isn't paying that much for a display
for a 5-inch device, regardless of pixel density,
because the Droid DNA was a pretty high-end display at the time.
That was one of the first 1080p phones.
You need to have iFixit do a teardown of this
and list the bomb cost of all the components.
Yeah, I'd be interested to see if we're getting closer
to Apple-like margins on the Nexus 6.
Google's profiting.
Are the cameras the same?
I feel like the cameras are nothing.
Yeah, the camera's nicer.
13 megapixel versus 8 megapixel.
Yeah, better camera, slightly higher pixel count.
It's an AMOLED display,
so battery life should be pretty strong.
There's stuff going that's good for it.
I guess it all adds up, but yeah, it's still a huge gap to fill.
All right, so let's move on to our next topic.
This was posted by Bogus on the forum,
and the source is Goodwin Proctor,
and this is actually pretty funny
if you have the kind of sense of humor
to get amused by things that are super sad.
So Goodwin Proctor publishes a guidebook
on litigating with non-practicing entities,
also known as patent trolls.
So there's some notes here.
A dramatic surge in patent cases filed by NPEs
has captured the attention of corporate America
as well as state and federal legislators.
Both private and public sectors fuel ongoing calls for new laws
designed to mitigate or eliminate the perceived costs
and inefficiencies of patent troll litigation.
So in their whole guide to how to deal with this,
there were some interesting little nuggets,
one of which was that it appears to be actually more profitable
to patent troll than to deliver products and,
well, not necessarily to deliver products.
You're gonna make a lot of money if you make a good product
and you sell a lot of them,
but to be a company that actually makes products
and try to sue companies that infringe your patents.
So apparently since 2010, patent trolling has been more profitable
than actually delivering a product or service to market.
Non-practicing entities tend to be more successful in court
than practicing entities,
and it's getting to the point where legitimate businesses
might start doing it as well.
So the stats published by Goodwin Proctor say that,
so between 2010 and 2013,
the median gain from a patent suit by trolls
is eight and a half million.
The median gain for legitimate businesses was two and a half million.
So that was in 2013 US dollars.
This is like saying me and Paul and I could make more money
as drug dealers than running an honest YouTube channel.
Well, we probably could, but the problem here is
they're doing this within the bounds of the law.
Yeah, and on the backs of the actual YouTube channels.
Some relaxed morals you'd have to have to swing this way.
There's certain types of things that people do
that I really, really hate and despise
and think is kind of the lowest.
How do you live with yourself as a person
if you do this or work for a company that does this?
I don't know. I have to have some kind of moral okayness
with the job that I'm doing.
I have to have some sort of investment in,
okay, I'm at least on some level benefiting society
or producing something that's of value,
but this type of crap I despise.
It's really, really terrible.
Greed is a monster in all of us.
Yes. Well put, Kyle.
Dramatic beer drinking.
So this is actually great.
So Michael Strap, a partner at Goodwin
and one of the guide's authors explained
why the damages awarded to trolls are disproportionately high.
So there's an economic model of patent trolling
that includes building up like a legal war chest
by squeezing settlements from dozens of smaller companies
then suing a big fish like a Google or an Apple
or something like that.
So the patent trolls all are more capable
of absorbing a loss in these litigations
because they've got their war chest
and they don't have actual physical inventory
that is going to cost them money
if all of a sudden they can't sell it
because someone sued them over a patent infringement,
for example.
The trolls' victories in the small suits
can be used as evidence in their suit against the big fish,
something that a big fish going after someone
who's infringing a patent won't necessarily have
because they might not be chasing down every Tom, Dick and Harry
and then patent trolls normally try to settle outside of court
and the big fish will usually just take a big loss upfront
rather than the guaranteed legal fees to defend themselves
and the threat of an even higher fee
if the court does find in favor of the troll.
Unbelievable.
I mean, I'm not a legal expert.
I think that much should be obvious,
but something has to be done.
You can't have legitimate companies
that are innovating and investing in technologies
like Apple and Google and Microsoft
being sued by people who aren't actually making anything
every time they turn around.
I think it's also because this type of activity is
it's not very tangible.
It's like there's legal talk involved with it and that sort of thing
so it's difficult for people to grasp at first
how it even works,
but equate it to cheating in a video game,
like an aimbot, something like that.
That's what it equates with.
I mean, much worse than that, obviously,
because there's a lot more money at stake,
but think of the hatred that people direct
towards cheaters online at video games
and then transfer that over to real life, please,
and direct it towards these people.
Imagine if they were cheating you out of $8.5 million on average.
Yeah.
It's like, damn it, that guy stole my headshot.
Poverty bot.
Oh, God.
Poverty bot.
That's terrible.
This is something to be pissed off about.
Has there not been that much backlash against this sort of...
This is more of a recent crime against humanity, so to speak.
Well, you can't do anything about it.
That's the problem is the way the laws are set up now
is you can't do anything.
So what are you supposed to do?
Nothing.
I mean, there's...
I don't have any good actionable suggestions
for people to fix this.
That's probably the biggest problem.
I mean, this was one thing when we were working for Newegg
that I always appreciated about them
was that their legal team will actually go after some people.
They've won several cases against some pretty large patent trolls.
Yeah, I remember that.
I think there was a patent for one-click checkout
or something like that,
that Newegg basically said, screw off, we're going to fight it.
Yeah, there was a one-click checkout thing.
The shopping cart?
The shopping cart patent.
Oh, any online retailer who has a virtual shopping cart,
we have a patent on that, so they all owe us money.
But Newegg fought them and took them down and that sort of thing.
But I mean, that's still just...
That's a few.
There's a few wins that they have.
The amount of this that goes on by comparison, I think, is massive.
And I mean, that's what this article is about.
It's obviously insanely profitable.
And the snowballing effect that has
is insanely profitable things like this
where people are making that much money,
they can then offer that money to people who are smart
who can figure out ways to do it better.
That's been the problem in the States for quite a long time
because a lot of the smartest people and the smartest graduates from schools
are not going into the science sector and that sort of thing.
They're going into finance to learn ways to game them Wall Street better
and that sort of thing. It kind of sucks.
Anyway, sorry to go off topic.
Speaking of money being important,
let's go ahead and do our sponsor call-outs for today's episode.
So Squarespace is one of our sponsors today
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They build websites professionally,
and I was trying to get my own website started for my own personal YouTube channel,
and I asked them for any suggestions of just like a no-brainer site
that would just kind of easily handle things for me,
and both of them simultaneously were like Squarespace.
And so a week later I signed up for IX web hosting, which is not Squarespace.
Wow, right in the middle of my sponsorship spot.
Because Steve from Newegg is an idiot,
and he convinced me of the wrong choice, clearly.
I had succumbed to the persuasion that is Steve.
You should probably try out Squarespace.
If you buy a year at a time, then they throw in your domain cost for free,
and you get a discount, obviously, because you buy a year at a time.
And oh, yeah, guys, check out this.
So this Instagram picture is what I was talking about a second ago right there.
Three guys.
One cup.
On this like massive, massive boom arm with the camera above him here.
Just absolutely freaking incredible.
What's the name of that Instagram account?
Sorry, I will find out for you.
If not, I'll find it.
Yeah, it's just his name, Alex Honnold, with two Ns.
All right, so our second sponsor today is Five4Club,
and they have a new offer that we don't normally do.
Five4Club tries all kinds of stuff with us.
So they've tried like a discount, and they've tried putting like cash in the box,
and now they're trying something completely different.
And I'm actually going to get all the numbers right this time.
Five4Club is the sponsor whose integration spots I have screwed up more than any other sponsor.
It's a bloody miracle that they actually even advertise with us anymore
because I've given the wrong pricing.
I've given the wrong like discount amount.
I've done everything wrong with these guys.
Anyway, this time we've got it right.
bit.ly slash linusffc use offer code linus2 for an extra item in your first package.
And what would the items in your package be, you might ask?
Well, Five4Club is the club that you join if you want to be well-dressed
and you want to do it without putting any effort into it whatsoever.
Basically, you go on their site, you take a survey that takes literally seconds.
So you just click get started, you go through a survey, you tell them, you know, about your style,
what you'd like to wear, your sizing, and then they have your personal style advisor
pick out clothes for you every month and send them to you.
So the membership costs 60 bucks a month.
I'm just going to double check that, make sure.
Yes, good. See, I got it right this time.
The membership costs 60 bucks a month and compared to the retail pricing on their clothing,
you're going to be paying about half.
So if you're on their site and you say, okay, well, these cost about $120,
that's about how much, at least, at least $120 worth every month you get for 60 bucks.
And what they're doing for us is with offer code Linus2,
you get an extra item worth 35 to 40 bucks in your package every, or not every month, the first month.
See, I almost said every month and I almost screwed it up again,
but I'm not going to do it this time.
Five4Club guys, and I clicked the wrong lower third.
Okay, I did manage to screw it up.
Dropping the ball, man.
I can't do anything right.
Something about Five4Club.
It's a curse.
I wear their shirts in my tech quickie videos all the time because I really like that one shirt.
It's just got a nice little Five4 logo and it's like really comfy and the buttons look nice.
People compliment me on that shirt all the time, actually.
I've seen that shirt. It's a nice shirt.
It is a nice shirt. I actually really like it.
I'd pay 60 bucks a month for compliments. I never get those.
And you're fishing for them right now.
You do enjoy fishing though, don't you, Kyle?
Speaking of being willing to pay 60 bucks a month for compliments,
I have something nice to say about BlackBerry.
They can't keep their passport in stock.
I don't know if this is more to do with the fact that they didn't produce enough of them
or more to do with that it's a really great, amazing, square device with a keyboard on it
that people really, really want to buy, but there you go.
They sold 200,000 passports within two days of launch
and stock was apparently completely wiped out after six hours of sales.
Amazon alerted purchasers by email that their passport had an expected delivery date of October 17th to 20th
with Shop BlackBerry quoting October 29th as the delivery date.
So things are looking up maybe for the BlackBerry brand
as they saw an operating loss of only 207 million last quarter below analyst expectations.
They expected a loss of 16 cents per share and only ended up losing 2 cents per share after exclusions.
So I haven't tried the passport.
I feel like I was very dismissive of it when I first heard about it,
but would love to hear what you guys think about the passport actually.
We're going to do a straw poll for this one rather than a Twitter blitz
just because that way we can have something up while we move on to the next topic.
We don't actually have a ton of time left which is sort of unfortunate,
but Blackberry Passport.
Yay, nay, nah.
Those are going to be the options because I don't have a whole lot of time to create this poll.
All right.
It's an important one.
It is an important one.
I really want to know what people think of stuff like this.
Like what the heck is this thing?
I realize now that I haven't actually shown a picture of it on screen,
so I should probably do that just for folks who aren't.
Looks like we've got a spammer in the chat, Linus.
I think you need to kick someone.
Yeah, I know, right?
I should kick that Linus Tech guy.
What a jerk.
Pasta.
All right.
Here it is.
Is Blackberry still running their own operating system?
Yes, but apparently the integration of the Play Store is much better now.
You can basically just install Android apps.
Oh, that's cool.
So they're not nearly as limited in terms of app support.
Right.
There it is.
All right.
Linus screen share.
Boom.
Blackberry Passport.
Got your full keyboard.
Also got a nice large touchscreen.
Looks like a very, you know, a productivity-friendly more square aspect ratio,
so I can see what people like about it.
I'm just not sure if it's the right thing for me necessarily.
All right.
So let's move on to the next topic here.
Wow, there's a lot of topics that I haven't even touched yet.
We're just going to have to go through these pretty fast.
Facebook's next phone might be built by Samsung.
There's been a few meetings between top brass at both companies,
and the failure of the HTC First, which was the first Facebook phone,
is not stopping them from planning a new phone necessarily.
And I don't think we're going to see like a Facebook-only phone or anything like that,
but it's more likely to be something with some Facebook features integrated into it.
I mean, Samsung's one of the few Android handset makers
that is still really sticking with their own skin on top of Android
that is really quite different from how Android is supposed to work.
LG actually as well.
I guess they still have quite a few differences,
but I could see Samsung potentially working in more Facebook integration.
Not sure how beneficial that would necessarily be to users,
but hey, whatever, it's TouchWiz, so it wouldn't be the first time.
YouTube ads linking to malicious sites.
This was posted on the forum by Rainfall Within,
and it's from the Trend Micro blog that we got this information.
Basically, these ads were appearing in videos with up to 11 million views,
and they don't take you directly to malicious sites,
but rather first through advertising sites.
So the exploit used in this attack was the sweet orange exploit kit,
which uses certain vulnerabilities in Java, Flash, and IE.
And the final payload of the attack are variants of the COVTER malware family,
which is known for ransomware attacks.
So there have been 113,000 victims, with 95% of them being from the U.S.
Mind you, there was a patch for this attack in May 2013,
so if you keep your Windows up to date, you're probably okay.
Now we've got something that I'm sure Paul and Kyle are going to want to weigh in.
Bethesda to officially support 60 FPS with the Evil Within on PC.
This was posted by Spoody on the forum, and the original article is from PC Gamer.
And it sounds like great news on the surface.
I mean, we get some console commands for things like God Mode, which is cool,
Noclip, which is cool.
But by 30 FPS, they mean they're unlocking it from the previously rumored
30 frames per second lock to 60 FPS only.
So you may run the game at 30 FPS or 60 FPS, but not more FPS.
And they are saying that there's going to be potentially some glitches in the game
at 60 frames per second at launch, but that they will fix them.
And anything else, you can set whatever resolution you want,
but it's going to be glitchy and they're not going to fix it.
Well, 60 is better than 30, but it's still not ideal.
For gamers that have 144 hertz or 120 hertz refresh rate monitors,
I mean, I think they're still going to be disappointed.
You're going to appease some of the population, but for the majority,
it just seems like they're trying to cover up their mistake or whatnot.
So I feel like I'm trying to look a gift horse in the mouth here,
because it's nice that they, I mean, no, no.
Actually, never mind. I'm changing my mind right now.
Screw that, because we should not be like, oh, well,
it was nice of them to at least give 60.
They should have given 60 at the beginning without having to come out
and be like, oh, well, we'll maybe give you 60,
but we're not really going to actually put any effort into it
or support it or anything like that.
This is half-assed and...
And we expect your full ass next time, Bethesda.
I have a negative opinion of it. That's what I've decided.
Yes.
Okay.
I'm not impressed.
All right, well, there's a couple things I need to mention here really briefly.
First of all, we got our poll results for the BlackBerry Passport
with the overwhelming majority saying meh or nay
and 17% saying yay, which is interesting,
because 17% of the smartphone market would still be a very viable business for BlackBerry.
It's not a negligible amount.
Also, I realized that I never showed the picture of the extra item from 5.4,
so once again, I have screwed up a 5.4 integration.
That is the Henley that you get. Don't worry.
It doesn't have a crazy pattern on it.
It's just made from a ribbed material.
Actually, it looks quite nice.
So there you go. I screwed up all the things.
Once again, go team Linus.
This is why you need to click.
So, yeah, because normally I can kind of do these things
while he handles a topic on his own,
but I don't trust you guys that much.
Yeah, for good reason.
Well, I did have a half an hour to look over all the topics.
So, oh, yeah, back to the evil within.
There are other problems, too.
You can change the aspect ratio,
but some gameplay prompts appear in the cinematic black bars
that are going to only be there if you're running in the correct cinematic aspect ratio,
so you just won't see those things if you change the aspect ratio,
and no, that will not be fixed either, apparently.
If they were really serious about wanting to give people
a better experience at that higher frame rate,
they would just make it all open source
so that the modders could go in who are really passionate about it,
fix all those issues, and make it run at 60 frames per second or even beyond.
You don't even have to make it open source for that.
You just have to use stuff to enable modders, yeah.
Lots of mods to go in there, yeah.
Okay, so of course there was a big Apple event this week,
and I guess I'll have to do a very quick summary
because, quite frankly, there wasn't that much of interest.
I mean, Apple Pay is coming Monday, which is really cool.
They've got hundreds of banks signed up.
They've got lots of merchants signed up.
I mean, for me personally, the time savings of whipping out my phone
and trying it first and then realizing that, you know,
half the time plus it's not going to work and needing to take out my card anyway
is very limited, but the privacy improvements do look pretty impressive.
So Apple basically stores any of your card information
in that isolated non-network connected chip that's right on the phone,
the same place they keep your fingerprint information,
and they share none of this info with the retailer, which is very, very cool.
So you don't have to worry about your, you know, ID being seen by someone
as you hand it to them.
You don't have to worry about your credit card number being easier to steal.
I mean, actually, there was a leak this week, wasn't there,
another retailer lost a bunch of credit cards?
Another one?
I think so.
I didn't catch that.
Chances are you're right.
Whatever, it happens from time to time,
so the retailer themselves wouldn't even need your credit card information
in order to process your payment, which is very cool, and it's coming.
Also, we get a Retina 5K 27-inch iMac that's super thin,
comes with mobile 290 GPUs and a 295, whatever that is,
I'm not 100% sure what that is,
but don't get too wrapped up in how great a mobile 290 sounds
because that's actually a Pitcairn GPU,
so it's very similar to a 7870,
actually not really that special in terms of performance.
This is not... A mobile 290 to a regular 290
is not what a mobile GTX 980 is to a desktop GTX 980.
AMD hasn't gotten there yet.
So 5K, 5120 by 2880 Res, it's got Thunderbolt 2.
SSD is not standard still for some reason.
It's got the latest Core i7s, and that all sounds pretty good
if you're one of those people who's into all-in-ones
rather than having something that just functions as a display
and then something that you connect to it
because that is more modular, which is good.
Yeah, the new iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 are coming,
so they've sold 225 million iPads evidently
since they started selling them, which is unbelievable.
That's like eight times the number of people in Canada altogether.
That's a lot of iPads.
Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of iPads.
This is starting from the very first iPad ever created?
Yes, yes.
And I think that's something like over four times
what Samsung has sold total,
in spite of them having so many models of tablets.
So it's very, very impressive.
Did you happen to hear about the Microsoft Surface fiasco,
the deal they signed with the NFL?
Yeah, I did.
Okay, I thought that was...
Yeah, with all the commentators calling them iPads on air,
even though...
Yeah, I mean, the iPad is so...
To the average person, that's just what a tablet is, iPad.
Right, exactly.
It's Kleenex.
And it's funny, because in the tech space,
we don't think about that, because obviously an iPad's an iPad
and an other tablet's an other tablet,
but no, to regular people,
they just don't give two craps and an iPad's a tablet.
Oh, gotta love regular people.
So the new iPad Air 2 is 18% thinner,
the screen is less reflective, it's got an A8X SoC,
which actually has 50% more transistors than the A8
that we find in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Very interesting, not sure necessarily
exactly where all those transistors went,
but performance should be pretty darn impressive.
It's got a better camera, so you can be a pad hole,
walk around, take pictures,
and now features Touch ID, which I guess is good.
Also, the Mac Mini got an update with the latest Intel CPUs,
with Intel Iris graphics, two Thunderbolt 2 ports,
PCI Express storage, and AC wireless.
Oh yeah, the wireless on the new iPad is apparently faster too,
so I guess that's cool.
So the one thing about this whole Apple event
that's kind of irritating me
is since the new version of the operating system
is called Yosemite,
I feel like they've been co-opting images of Yosemite
and using them for Apple branding and it pisses me off.
Mother Nature is going to sue Apple as the ultimate irony.
Who's gonna go and be like,
no, Half Dome is a registered trademark of Yosemite
and apparently now also an Apple, like,
I don't want Half Dome to be used to sell Apple products.
Apple is reportedly suing Mother Nature
for the usage of Half Dome
and its marketing branding.
Okay, sorry.
Oh yeah, I guess I didn't really talk about the new OS X at all.
I guess I just don't care.
Hey-o!
Cheers.
Well, it's not that I don't care because it's bad,
I just don't care because I didn't use the old one,
so all these new amazing differences mean nothing to me
because I don't have any frustrations with the old one
or anything that I like about the old one,
it just is what it is.
Speaking of things that are what they are,
augmented reality might not be necessarily
what we thought it was gonna be.
I mean, I think that Google Glass
looked very augmented reality from the beginning,
like we were kind of thinking we were gonna be wearing glasses
or goggles or whatever else,
but this is a rumor right now,
but Google and others may invest $500 million
into augmented reality company Magic Leap
who isn't gonna be putting a lens in front of your eyes,
but rather is planning to basically beam the image into your eyes,
allegedly solving the need for higher resolution
that solutions like Oculus Rift with a headset are going to have.
So the vision would be to have the product display an image into the eye
so that instead of having to pull out a phone,
you would just see things in the world around you that...
I mean, it's funny, they're calling it cinematic reality
because they think augmented reality is a bit of an...
undersells the technology a little bit because of how realistic it is,
but I mean, this is what it is.
Here's an augmented reality elephant in the hand of someone.
You can call it whatever you want, but it's still augmented reality.
It looks incredibly cool and gaming with a technology like this
where you don't even have to wear a headset
and you just see stuff that isn't there.
Wow.
So I'm getting this image in my head of like...
kind of like in The Matrix, you know, when he wakes up
and there's just the rows and rows of people, you know,
they're all in their little pods, like something like that
with all these people and these little devices in front of them
just beaming images like directly into their brain,
but really what this has inspired me to do
is developed my own device kind of based on the same technology,
which is going to be a food delivery system
that puts a tube down your throat
and just puts the food directly into your stomach.
That way you don't have to worry about the whole chewing and swallowing thing.
You could partner with the guys that make Soylent.
Exactly, yeah.
Does Luke look paler or anything like that
or is he becoming more and more stronger than he has ever been?
No, he seems all right.
He's not entirely on Soylent, though.
He does eat it for most of his nutritional stuff,
but he still eats, but mostly just because eating is kind of nice
and things taste good and Soylent doesn't taste that great.
I'm glad you've been feeding him.
Well, I don't feed him. He has to feed himself.
Oh, okay.
I just watch.
Because it's liquid, right?
So there's just these visuals I have of Linus feeding Luke
with a big baby bottle or something.
Right? That could be a T-shirt.
That's the worst image that's ever been in anyone's head during this show.
I am happy to have brought it to all of your fans.
Thank you.
That's what I'm here for.
You guys will never be on my show again.
Get out.
All right, so Skype kick, I guess would be how we pronounce this.
QIK, this was originally posted by Good Bytes on the forum.
The article is from theverge.com,
and this is supposed to be an attempt to take over mobile video messaging.
So this actually started out as just a video consumption platform,
but I just realized I'm not actually screen sharing with you guys,
so there you go.
They're showing it running on Windows Phone as if that matters,
iOS and Android,
unless that HTC One M8 is a Windows Phone version of the HTC One M8,
which it probably isn't,
because I don't think anyone ever actually bought one of those.
Although I'd love to be proven wrong.
You know, it's amazing how many people are hating on me
for my negativity about the Windows Phone HTC One M8 in my review,
and yet I have never seen one.
I've never heard any report of anyone owning it ever,
and people misinterpreted a lot of what I said.
I didn't say Windows 8 Phone is a platform for nobody.
What I said was this is a device for nobody,
a high-end, truly high-end premium cost device that runs Windows Phone,
because the people who buy high-end devices are going to have needs
for their mobile devices that go beyond what Windows Phone can do,
because the app ecosystem is so immature.
Speaking of which, I'm still super upset that the NFC chip in here
only does Apple Pay and doesn't do other stuff.
Anyway, it started as a video streaming service,
was available on mobile devices before YouTube,
so this is kind of an old platform.
It's all done through your mobile phone number.
No account sign-up is necessary.
It's being pitched as an alternative to text messaging,
and can easily switch between the front and rear cameras while recording.
There's no preview or processing,
and it has a 42-second max recording you can send to one person or a group,
and if your friend doesn't have Kick,
they will receive an SMS with instructions on how to download it.
So you can pre-record up to 12 messages for use when you're in a rush,
so just pre-recorded like,
hey, I can't talk right now.
I don't know why people would want that instead of an SMS, but sure, whatever.
And the messages disappear after two weeks if they aren't deleted.
Like, practically speaking to me, this seems like something that might be
a competitor for, like, Vine or something like that, but like...
No, because it's messaging, not broadcast.
It's more like Snapchat. It's more like a competitor to Snapchat.
So now we can have videos of penises instead of pictures of them?
Like, is that what we're doing here?
You can do video with Snapchat, too.
That was a benefit that I hadn't considered,
but I mean, the beautiful thing about a text message is when I get a text message,
I can glance at my phone without unlocking, without doing anything,
and it can appear on one or two lines, and I can immediately know what was said,
and it's faster than watching a short video of somebody being like,
hey, man, I'll call you later, or something like that.
Well, that's a stupid reason to send a video to someone,
just to tell them that you'll call them later.
But it has pre-recorded, like, messages, like, hey, I'm in class right now.
Like, that's the kind of thing people use that stuff for.
But the pre-recorded stuff is useless. It's all garbage.
It's short message service. It's supposed to be like a quick communication,
a quick interaction with someone.
This feels like a step backwards. This feels like video voicemail.
Exactly.
One application I could see this in is, like, let's say you're in a place
that you've never been before, and you're meeting someone there for the first time.
You could send them a message and say, hey, I'm here waiting for you.
You could also send them an MMS with a picture of you.
Yeah, but the picture only goes so far.
If you're in a location they need to see visually where you are, 360 degree view,
you can actually give them a panoramic shot of where you are,
meet me in this location so they can recognize it when they walk up to the place.
So you could send them a panoramic picture.
So you can send them a panoramic picture or video.
You could send them three pictures.
Fail, Kyle! Fail!
No! Put a filter on it, Linus. Put a filter on it.
Kyle has already invested in quick, I think, which is why he's really...
I am the first investor in quick.
Is it quick or kick? I don't care.
If it's a Q, I feel like it should be...
But there's no U.
Oh, you're right. Okay.
The U is not silent because it's not there.
That's not proper use of Q anyway.
This is cool. This was posted by R. Boulson on the forum,
and it's the Carl Zeiss VR1.
So we know about Samsung's VR headset for the Note,
and we know about Google Cardboard,
which is obviously not going to be the greatest solution ever
because it's going to fall apart and stuff.
But this is the VR1, which is a more flexible one.
So you basically just buy a tray.
So here's one of the...
Really? I can't mouse over this without this stupid thing.
Well, whatever. So you guys will have to envision my mouse over there.
So you buy a tray that your phone slips into,
anything from 4.7 to 5.2 inches,
and then you can use your phone as VR.
So that's cool, I guess.
Moving right along.
PewDiePie may be starting his own YouTube network.
So this was an interview with Pulse2.com,
and then he was also on the cover of IconMagazine.se.
This was posted by Tech Dreamer on the forum,
and actually generated a lot of discussion.
He makes an estimated 4 million per year in ad sales,
so that's gross.
And that was last year, so I'm going to assure you it's a lot more this year.
Plans to leave Maker Studios in December to create his own network.
Thinks other networks have been managed in such an incredibly poor way
that it's silly and would like to help other YouTubers.
And say what you want about Pewds.
You know, how you might like or dislike his content or whatever.
The guy's smart, and maybe I should join his network.
How do you know he's smart?
How do you know he's not just incredibly lucky
and remotely attractive for a YouTube personality?
Anyone at the top of any field is smart. Guarantee it.
I don't know.
Octomom had some fame there.
Sorry, who?
Octomom.
Octomom.
Yeah, but that's not the top of a field.
That's 15 minutes of fame.
I'm talking someone who has in a sustained, repeated manner
beat everyone else who competes at something.
I've seen some actors who wouldn't line up with that.
But what does PewDiePie do that no one else can do?
Hold on a second.
Remember, some actors that are dumb, sure,
but I said at the top of a field.
PewDiePie is the number one YouTuber.
Put me at the number one of anything where the person's an idiot.
You can't do it.
Are you still on a network at this point, Linus?
Yeah, I'm with Twitch right now,
but I'm actually probably switching on YouTube.
On Twitch TV, I'm still going to stay partnered with Twitch.
I'm still going to do all my streaming on Twitch.
But on YouTube, I'll potentially be moving over to,
well, I feel bad for not remembering, Maker Studios.
Oh, okay. Isn't that where PewDiePie is leaving?
PewDiePie is leaving that network.
No, I think that might be why I have Maker Studios in my head.
I'm going to have to look it up now.
When's the Linus network coming and when can I join?
And do you feel like you have some big shoes to fill?
And sure, yes, I'll join your network.
Replacing PewDiePie on the Maker Studios network.
Thanks for asking.
Sorry, I feel bad.
Full screen, full screen. Sorry, not Maker.
I've talked to every network at some point in time.
Hey, we're on full screen.
Full screen.
Yeah, full screen's awesome.
Yeah, so I might be joining full screen.
Okay.
I like full screen. I don't have a problem with them.
All right, so let's go ahead and see if we've got any more.
Oh, yeah, Netflix raises the price for 4K video streaming.
This was posted by Tech Dreamer on the forum.
And this is actually the second price hike we've seen
from Netflix in like, what, a year?
And that was after, for a long time,
the pricing being very, very stable.
So if you signed up for a 4K enabled account already,
you get to keep your current subscription price
until August 12, 2016.
But for new subscribers, the monthly price for 4K will be 12 bucks.
So you can enjoy 4K content like Breaking Bad, House of Cards,
and The Smurfs on your 4K TV that you also probably don't own yet.
Although 4K doesn't work on all TVs, you need to have a supported TV.
So once again, early adopters for any new video standard
get the old kick in the teeth.
Way to go.
You spent way too much on something that not only didn't work when you bought it,
but isn't even going to work at the time that it was supposed to work.
That's why you go with an HDPC.
It's pretty normal.
But yeah, this was one of those stories where I was like,
okay, I mean, I think the people right now who have the capability
to watch Netflix in 4K aren't really probably going to be too pissed off
by three extra dollars a month.
I would hope that once it becomes a little bit more mainstream,
maybe they'll do like a discount plan or something.
Not get down to 10. I'll sign up for 10.
All right, so next up we've got the snappening.
Snap saved images leaked.
So 500 megs of images were leaked according to Snap Saved.
SnapSaved.com is a website that allows users to save Snapchat messages,
and it was compromised.
Their database was immediately deleted when the hack was discovered,
but there are concerns that many of the leaked images
could be classified as child porn.
So, yeah.
That's a messy situation.
I guess that's all there is to really say about that.
Although, one Pirate Bay user complained that so far from what I've seen,
the vast majority are just black screens with text overlaid
or just a normal selfie.
That would be my initial response to be like, man,
the pictures aren't even that good.
Nexus Player is coming.
So this was posted by LOLs on the forum.
The original source is Google's own page about it.
So let's go check that thing out.
Ooh, Nexus Player.
So, ooh, yeah, good idea,
but probably ahead of your time a little bit there.
And the page is loading a bit slowly, so sorry about that.
But at any rate, the Nexus Player is coming.
It's going to come with a remote and a controller.
The remote has voice search, comes with apps such as Netflix and TED.
There's a full list on the Google page for it
that I would love to show you, except that it's not loading right now.
And it has free online multiplayer from Google Play Games.
So the thing that all consoles should always have forever
because it's just baffling to me that you have to pay
to subscribe to a multiplayer service when you already bought the game
and you already have your internet connection.
It's got a 1.8 GHz quad-core Intel Atom processor,
802.11ac, 2x2 MIMO,
so that's a pretty good wireless solution,
HDMI out, and it'll cost $100 and the controller will cost $40.
And one thing, though, that's missing,
and it better have a good wireless solution
because it does not have a wired network connection.
That's a bit of a killer for me.
Oh, damn.
Yeah, I personally have to pee. I'll be right back.
Thank you. Thank you, Kyle.
We should end the show while he's gone
so that I don't have to talk about where people can go watch Kyle make videos.
That's all right. Yeah, we'll leave his plugs out of it.
So this is like the upgrade to the Chromecast, I guess.
It's Android-based.
It's got a better processor, and you can actually play games on it,
and it's only $100.
Yeah, it looks that way.
So you've been using your shield and everything to play games.
Do you actually play any Android platform games?
No, they're all rubbish.
Yeah, so I guess that would be my issue.
Sure, you can play Android games, but I don't play any Android games,
so the draw really isn't there for me.
But, I mean, I don't know.
For $100, this is a tough sell for me.
I'd rather spend, I think, shield.
Shield portable is down to, what, 200 bucks now?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd rather have one of those and run it in console mode for sure.
You'd have a lot more flexibility with what you could play on it,
and that's for damn sure.
So the original article here is from New York Times,
and that is that HBO is to start their own standalone streaming service
come 2015, which is, I guess, pretty cool.
Actually, very cool, because now you won't have to have a cable subscription
in order to get access to HBO programming.
So this intensifies their growing rivalry with Netflix.
HBO is trying to cater to the new generation
that doesn't have any interest in cable subscriptions.
I have only had one when my cable provider offered it to me for free.
I watched hockey games. That was it.
10 million homes in the U.S. have no cable or satellite subscription
but do have internet.
Half of those are subscribed to a streaming surface service.
So CEO of HBO says it's time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO.
All in, there are 80 million homes in the U.S. that do not have HBO,
and we will use all means at our disposal to go after them.
So there you go.
There's that popular web comic, I think it was from the oatmeal,
where somebody was like, I want to watch Game of Thrones,
but I want to do it legitimately.
And then the whole comic was about them trying to legitimately watch Game of Thrones
and then eventually giving up and pirating it.
This is my only issue here.
This is going to make that argument a lot more difficult.
Anyone who pirates Game of Thrones regularly now,
they have much less of an excuse.
This, to me, signals the beginning of the end of cable TV and the world.
Yeah, I don't understand why it still needs to exist.
Kyle used a little bit more hyperbole there, but just a bit of embellishment.
All right, we've got a few more rapid-fire topics,
but I've got to go through these incredibly quickly
because we've completely run out of time.
Amazon to open a physical store in New York.
It could act as a way to highlight products like Fire TV.
This is a breakthrough.
It's a revolutionary thing that Amazon has done here.
Yeah, opening a store.
Maybe Newegg will follow suit, and then maybe NCIX will open a retail.
Oh, wait, no, they've already got them.
They have them.
They're called the hybrid center.
They're like the hipsters of the tech industry.
All right, Corsair RGB keyboards allegedly only producing 512 colors.
Corsair is advertised as supporting 8-bit color,
giving 16.8 million total color combinations.
However, it has been found to support only 3-bit color,
giving 512 combinations.
To people who are sort of blown away by this,
all I really have to say is Corsair is doing what they had to do here, I think.
I don't think it's right.
I don't think it's right for anyone to advertise 16.8 million RGB lighting
as a product when it's obviously not actually 16.8 million color combinations,
but let's take this mouse, for example.
This is a Logitech mouse.
Logitech is a big company, a good company, good people.
That LED lighting is advertised as 16.8 million.
There's no way.
There's no way in hell that it produces 16.8 million colors.
If you guys have ever had an RGB product, drag the color wheel around.
You know, take two yellows that are similar,
and see if you can actually see the difference in the LED.
There is no difference, because it doesn't actually do it.
It's never actually done it, and if anything,
Corsairs transitions much more smoothly, in my experience,
than the BlackWidow Ultimate Chroma anyway,
and a lot more smoothly than a lot of other RGB products I've seen.
So I really wonder how many colors most RGB products out there actually support.
Like I said, still wrong, shame on you Corsair, but there you go.
According to the forum users, the issue is that
it's either that they are constrained to the USB protocol
that only supports three bits per channel,
or because the three Panasonic A32181 LED Matrix ICs
they use to control the keyboard are only able to give individual LEDs
three bits of control per channel.
So there you go.
I don't think there's been an official statement from Corsair, but yeah.
FutureMark launches the world's first 4K benchmark.
This was posted by TechFanBoy on the forum,
and the source is from KitGuru.net.
FireStrike Ultra renders the FireStrike benchmark in 4K.
You need at least three gigs of VRAM to run the benchmark,
and the leaderboards are live.
There's a JBL special edition of the OnePlus One and earphones,
but I don't really like talking about OnePlus One,
because I think that they're OnePlus One.
It is what it is.
OnePlus Two.
So that equals to the answer to the equation.
Apple Patents flexible device display input method.
So the device would react to bending using that as an input method.
Very cool.
And Asus Strix mechanical keyboards with blue, black, brown, and red keyswitches
are either available now or coming soon.
I actually haven't seen if they're on sale yet.
This was posted by Quercius.
Oh yeah, and the Apple patent thing was from TechDreamer.
This was posted by Quercius on the forum,
and this is the Strix Tactic Pro.
There we go.
Really?
How is Asus and Corsair going to be buddy-buddy
now that Asus has mice and keyboards?
And headsets.
And headsets.
And I think they had cases at one point, didn't they?
I know they have server cases.
They sell kind of bare-bones server systems and stuff.
I'm not sure if they have mainstream consumer gamer cases
or anything like that.
But I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
Well, at any rate, it's a gaming keyboard.
It's mechanical.
It's got some macro keys on the left.
Pricing looks reasonable.
It's got N-key rollover.
And it's got three more macro keys under the space bar,
a position that I personally really, really like for them,
because whenever you're not jumping, you might as well be macroing something
and maybe more than one thing.
And I think that's pretty much it for my topic.
So I guess the rest here is, you know what, actually,
do you guys mind if we end the show
and then we come back immediately for a quick after-party?
Maybe you guys can update me on how things are going
now that you're free from the shackles that bound you.
Of course.
Let's do that.
So the after-party will be back in like a couple seconds here.
They can hear you, by the way.
Damn it.
Hello.
So they can hear us when they can't see us?
Yes.
So you could be naked and you wouldn't be bothering them anymore.
This is Paul.
This is Paul.
I hate all of you.
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