We are live. Welcome to the WAN Show, ladies and gentlemen.
We have a fantastic show lined up for you this week,
and the biggest news of the week, in our humble opinion,
Valve actually freaking did it, going one step,
getting one step closer to working anti-cheat on Linux
in advance of the launch of the upcoming Steam Deck.
In other news, the EU proposes to force USB-C charging on all devices.
Yes, that includes you, Apple. What else we got?
I took all the good stuff. I know I did.
You did, but there's still some other interesting things.
There's a new Super Mario Bros. movie coming,
and some people are questioning the cast a little bit.
Also, within that same topic, there's more N64 and Sega games
coming to the Switch, and some of them are actually pretty good-looking titles.
Also, Microsoft announces a new Surface, well, multiple new Surface devices,
and they look kind of interesting.
Sir Fye? Sir Fye? Rolling the intro.
Hey, look at that. Ed made us a new intro.
Dead Luke is dead.
I die every time. It's great.
I love the intros, dude.
Yeah, every once in a while, Ed actually makes us a new one.
The show is brought to you today by Cloud Linux Tux Care.
You mean to do something?
Why don't we jump right, oh, brought to you by JumpCloud,
Seasonic, and Cloud Linux Tux Care.
All right, why don't we jump right into our first topic of the day.
Valve freaking did it.
Well, no, we should give the background for this,
because what is the deal?
Why doesn't anti-cheat work on Linux?
Tell me, Luke, you're the technical one, right?
I mean, there just hasn't been any support for it.
I'm just a pretty face.
People could have made it.
They just didn't up until now.
The user base is really small, and it just never happened.
And a lot of people were concerned about this,
because Valve made the claim of the 100% Steam library,
library, 100% Steam library compatibility thing.
People like me kind of assumed,
oh, they probably just mean performance-wise it could run it,
but maybe there's going to be some other problems.
But no, they seem to be trying to go after that goal.
Multiple different anti-cheats are going to be compatible now.
Apparently Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney
announced that easy anti-cheat will support Proton,
which is Valve's whole kind of thingamajig.
So that includes Fall Guys, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Halo,
The Master Chief Collection, Black Desert, and I believe much, much more.
Battle Eye is also added support.
So that is DayZ, Insurgency, PUBG, PUBG Battlegrounds?
What? It's just PUBG.
Battlegrounds is just BG.
No, I think it's PUBG Battlegrounds now,
just for recognizability something.
That's stupid.
Anyways, also Destiny 2.
No one's asking you to go to the ATM machine
and take out money to pay for it, okay?
What?
It's a joke. It's a joke.
Because the M in ATM is for machine.
Oh.
Good call.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
That whooshed me very hard,
because I thought you were genuinely talking about buying PUBG,
and I was like, I'm confused.
I already own PUBG.
Rainbow Six Siege, Arma, and more stuff as well.
Support for just those two anti-cheat solutions alone
will bring the number of games that would not be able to run before.
I like Anthony's word better.
He has borked on the dock.
Bring the number of borked titles on Proton Database's top 100
from 12 heavy hitters down to a single game.
That's freaking awesome.
Pretty huge.
I guess the question is, you know, what is it about Linux users
that made game developers hate them so much
and not care about bringing their anti-cheat to Linux?
Uh...
Or is it just apathy?
I mean, a lot of people already don't make, like,
Linux-compatible versions of their games at all.
So if you're not doing that,
why bother to make the anti-cheat work?
I guess so.
It could also be a chicken and egg issue
if you decide that you're going to use a certain anti-cheat for your game
and it doesn't work on that operating system.
That might limit you from developing the game for that operating system.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think the user base of gamers on Linux comparatively has been smaller.
So you have to see the development cost of making it for those people
and apply that over.
And that's sometimes a difficult equation to make,
especially when you don't know how much money you're going to make on the game at all.
This is why I'm already on the record
saying that the Steam Deck is so important
because Linux is going to go from having an install base of
literally dozens of us for gamers
to having an install base of millions overnight.
And all of a sudden developers are going to want a piece of that pie because...
And millions of people that are buying in specifically into that ecosystem
and are buying a device that's...
As much as it isn't, it is also definitely built around a store,
which means selling things.
And I think a lot of the ID or the demographic of Linux users has...
In some cases you have really intense enthusiasts
and in a lot of other cases you have people that are trying to get
a really good bang for their buck computer that is trying to spend as little as they can.
Literally a public library.
Trying to reuse ancient machines and still get a usable experience out of them.
So they're probably not going to spend a bunch of money on this bleeding edge new game.
So I think you have these...
Exactly.
And they're going to spend some money on that new game.
If I'm a Steam Deck user, I'm looking for something to play on it.
Absolutely.
And if I'm a game developer,
I am going to be all over making sure that my game is great on Steam Deck.
Because you know that Valve is going to be looking for reasons for people to buy Steam Deck.
There's definitely going to be a section in the store for Steam Deck.
100%. 100%.
This is highly rated for how well it's adapted to Steam Deck.
That's something I would want to be able to search by in the store.
I'm certain it will be a thing.
Whether it's a user tag or whether Valve just builds it in, it'll definitely be there.
It'll definitely be possible.
So yeah, that's actually really exciting.
That's very, very cool.
genericplant left a Super Chat that said anti-cheat, at least some of it, does work under Linux.
The issue is that when you're gaming on Linux, a lot of the time you're using Proton or Wine,
which breaks the anti-cheat because you are trying to run the Windows version of the anti-cheat on Linux.
Interesting.
What's actually happening here, that's a really great Super Chat, thanks genericplant.
What's really happening here is they're finding a way to adapt it so that their anti-cheat isn't flagging
running within Proton as some kind of circumvention.
Because anti-cheat software by its very nature has to look for anything unusual and go,
no, no, do not like this.
I mean, we've talked about anti-cheat on the WAN show a fair bit in the past and a lot of the time,
it's a lot more insidious than it used to be.
I remember Luke and I have been playing Diablo and actually mostly Diablo in after party streams
over the last couple of weeks and we've been cheating, right?
We've been duping gold because ain't nobody got time for it.
Look, it's been fun.
It's a whole little mini game.
Yeah, and people are watching us on Twitch and we're like just duping gold.
Like, wow, there's like 2,000 people watching us duping gold.
Anyway, the point is back in the day, the way that you cheated at a game like Diablo
was you would download a trainer is what it's called.
I don't know what they called it anymore.
And I think they would include a character editor and so you could just go and you could edit your character.
And it was software that had to run on the computer at the same time.
So obviously one of the things that anti-cheat looks for is any software,
any processes that are running that could be injecting or sniffing any part of the game's data.
But it can be a lot like crazier than that.
Like some anti-cheat will actually flag you for gaming within a virtual machine, for example.
And the reason for that is that in a VM, without actually having a process running on the VM,
you could have a separate VM or more likely the hypervisor watching all the network activity
and monitoring it that way so that the anti-cheat can't find this process that's running on the same machine.
Then, you know, next level, you've got anti-cheat that will run as a pass through a completely separate machine
where that separate machine will actually control the user inputs.
And obviously there's nothing about that that I think would break proton compatibility.
The point is just that game developers are looking for any weird way that the game could be running
or any weird thing that's running alongside it and they're blocking that s*** immediately as soon as they can.
So it's no surprise that it didn't work and I get it.
Cheating is a huge problem in online games and honestly, I mean, man, Luke,
what would you give up in order to have no cheating in online games?
You're muted.
Quite a bit.
Like, would you be would you be willing?
OK. Oh, wow. We are getting into a real conversation here.
Because to know for sure that no one, because that's that's the big problem, right?
Is the second there's reasonable doubt.
It like corrupts the entire experience. Sucks the joy out of it.
It's not fun anymore. If someone even might be cheating, because I don't mind.
I would much rather I think I've told you this before. Ten times out of ten,
I would rather lose a close fight or a fair fight than win an uneven one.
That's not fun. There's no there's no glory in winning a one sided.
And it's not fun losing a one sided battle either. But, you know, you always want matchmaking, right?
Like better matchmaking is better for everyone and cheating destroys the matchmaking process.
So I've got a question for you and I'm sure our viewers are going to whether I ask them or not,
they're going to unsolicitedly weigh in on this one.
Luke, would you play a game that literally required you to submit photo ID every time you signed in?
Like they would validate your government issued ID.
You would have kind of like what Facebook tried to do or what Google Plus tried to do back in the day with this,
like true true identification system.
If you knew that as soon as someone got caught for cheating, not just an account ban,
but they personally would be banned from the game.
Now, obviously, people would try to find friends or family or relatives or whatever else.
And they would they would try to create additional accounts in this manner.
But would you submit your user information and would you play that game?
My stuff is already aggressively compromised as such as is yours.
But I wouldn't just because I couldn't bring myself to to support that system because of people whose information is not aggressively compromised.
That makes sense. So it's out of it's out of a concern for the people who might not be considering how much they're giving up.
Yeah. Yeah. OK, that's fair enough. That's fair enough.
I'd like want to, though, because none of my stuff matters anymore. Right.
Like, it's just whatever. I'm everywhere. So who cares?
I gave up on this whole thing a long time ago. I used to care so much about privacy and stuff.
And I was just like, whatever, dude, you can Google any of my things. So who cares?
But I wouldn't want to support that system. So, yeah, I wouldn't do it.
OK, that's fair enough. You know what? I man, I'd be I'd be real tempted.
I am tempted, you know, like I'm not saying that, but it's no secret that when you play with a controlled group of people who all are accountable to each other in the real world, you know, in real terms.
And I'm basically describing like China's social credit system at this point.
But it's no secret that when you game with people who actually care about what you think of them in the real world and the consequences of how they behave, it's a way better experience.
It's why LAN parties are so much fun and gaming with randoms on the Internet is so freaking toxic.
Like, it's why having a clan has been a thing for as long as online gaming has basically been a thing, because it's it's a curated gaming experience.
You you know that you're among friends who are going to engage in civil discourse or maybe they won't.
Maybe that's your clan's thing is you all you all talk to each other, but like that's fine, too, as long as it's among friends. Right.
And I man, I'd be oh, I'd be tempted. I'd be tempted. And a big part of it, too, would be just what if.
What if. OK, let me hit me. OK, so Valve had this thing with Counter-Strike that I actually was pretty down with where you I think you had to sink a phone number.
And it would it would you would only match make against other people that had that level of authentication.
So if that like account got banned and it had that phone number attached to it, that phone number was burned.
I think that's how that worked. And there's some wacky stuff there because. Sorry, what did they do away with that?
I don't know. That might still be a thing. Prime matchmaking. People are calling it prime matchmaking. Let me see if it's a thing. It's been a while since I've like seriously played Counter-Strike.
Prime matchmaking. And yeah, so the cool thing was you could play the game either way, but you could also decide to only match up with other people that are doing prime matchmaking and cheating.
It felt better. I don't know if it felt better because there was genuinely less people cheating or if it felt better because my brain thought there was less people cheating.
But either way, it felt better. I could see that. Ladi has a really good point here now.
And it's it's really funny because, oh, man, it's amazing the kinds of gymnastics your brain will do when you just don't want to, you know.
Like I would I would I would look at, you know, oh, I have to submit my I.D. and like, you know, like what you have to do with a vaccine passport where you have to send a video of yourself along with the photo I.D. for validation.
Yeah, this is like super definitely me. Like I would be more tempted to submit to that than Ladi here says.
Well, you could achieve this much less invasively. A Stadia only or whatever service Geforce now or whatever game that you can only stream is functionally uncheatable.
That's probably not quite true. I've seen some really sophisticated cheats that will actually do frame analysis for you and then input using mouse and keyboard inputs.
Not even that's not even sophisticated. And I mean, it's more sophisticated than my Diablo trainer, Luke. Come on. OK, come on. Help me out.
OK, OK. To me, a cheat is like a hex editor or you like you type you type into you type into the chat, you know, it is a good day to die.
OK, Luke. It's a Warcraft cheat in vulnerability. Yeah. Yeah. You just said you could send your peon in and be like you just hack up all the paladins. All right.
Anyway, the point is there there are there are cheats. It is good, man.
There are cheats that could work in a system like that through either a combination of just programming for a particular game or even through A.I.
Just identifying player models and then immediately tracking the crosshair to their head or whatever the case may be.
But you're right that it would be more difficult and.
Maybe easier to not probably be about the same difficulty to catch that person.
What do you think? So screens, screen scanners can be run on on local or external computers, and it doesn't matter if the game is being streamed to have a screen scanner do that.
And screen scanners can do tons of stuff. They can they can look for models of heads.
It was very simple back in the day with Counter-Strike because there was a very few of them.
And these days, to be completely honest, it's not exactly harder. There's a lot more different models of heads.
But the the tech on the cheating side is also advanced. So that's not really a big deal.
You can also look for things that that that state change.
So like. I'm just thinking Diablo right now. You could Diablo one.
You could have it look at your health bubble. You know, you have your health in your mana bubble.
I don't know where the land can see my stuff, but you can have it watch that and see for how much the red fills.
And if it gets low enough, could automatically use a potion. Like you can do all that kind of stuff.
It doesn't matter if the game is streamed to you or not. Those are just inputs based on things that are happening on the screen.
Right. So. Yeah, I'm sure it would help with some things, but like whether the game is streamed to you or not, it's going to be able to click on a head if it wants.
It's going to be able to do tons of other stuff if it wants. So Penn Agwin says, I know of services that allow you to get a non VoIP number for verification for pennies of numbers.
So it's not a perfect solution. See us. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.
I mean, if there's one thing that we can all agree on, I think it's that. Game cheaters really, really suck.
Online game cheaters are kind of the worst. Now tell me something, Luke. Linus Media Group has failed.
Floatplane can't make money. It's it's the business is is going down on your desk.
You've reached a point of desperation. OK, you have two paths. I'm a Fortnite streamer.
You are some kind of that's not a path. That's come on. That's even worse. OK.
You have two paths. OK, you're you're a coding prodigy and you've come up with simultaneously you've come up with an idea for like the next big pornography Web site.
Oh, or an epic cheating client, like cheating software. Option one. You'll make the same.
Oh, OK. Well, I was expecting this to be like, you know, that you know, that like working in.
It's not even controversial in twenty twenty one, dude. I don't think so anymore. You don't think so?
I don't think it stigmatizes much anymore. I remember talking I remember talking to Brandon about this way back.
Yeah, because because gamer people wouldn't want to put on the resumes that they had done it in the past.
I don't I don't I don't think that's as much of a thing anymore. There's been so much movement.
Do you stigmatizing that like whatever? I don't know. OK, then. Well, I really did expect that to be a longer conversation.
Moving on. We had talked about in the past about how we could potentially spin up like.
Another site that did video. Yeah, we've talked about that.
Yep. Yeah. So I was already down with that. I wasn't already down with making cheats for video games.
Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Now, just to be clear, just because the anti-cheat software does support these games doesn't.
Or just because the anti-cheat software can be supported through Proton doesn't mean that these games will immediately work.
It is up to the developer to patch them, to make them playable, if I understand it correctly.
With that said, so Riot's Vanguard anti-cheat, which is used by Valorant, may never be supported.
That's the one holdout that may just not be possible to play on a Steam Deck or on Linux.
But quite frankly, I think I could live without Valorant. Also not in the Steam library.
Luke, do you want to do a challenge with me? Oh, OK.
We each borrow an SSD from the office and we both try to install Linux on our daily driver gaming PCs. At the same time, we see who lasts longer.
OK. Winner gets, I don't know, I'll come up with something really cool. Winner gets something really cool that we'll come up with and we'll agree on.
Maybe the chat's going to have some suggestions. And that's it. We try to make the switch.
How do we? Yeah, OK. I've done this more recently.
I know. I've never tried to do it. I've never tried to daily drive Linux.
Quite a while. So what's the end date on this?
There's no end date. There's no end date. It's indefinite.
Wow. Wow. So or you know what? No, it's not a reward.
It's a punishment for whoever doesn't make it.
Yeah, because because I was trying to think of something I was going to be like, oh, we get a GPU upgrade or we get this or we get that.
But realistically, I think I think, you know, that, you know, I could just take something from the office if I felt like it.
And if you told me and with really sad with a really sad voice and puppy dog eyes,
I mean, realistically, I'm going to be like, why are you even telling me this? Just work it out with logistics.
So there's nothing really both you and I.
There's no reward I could offer either of us that isn't technology that we would conceivably care about.
And there's nothing that I can offer either of us that is technology that we could care about.
So it has to be something terrible. I think I think we tap Ethan from Channel Super Fun.
Oh, my. To come up with something that the loser has to do. And.
That's it. I'm I'm I want to hear what the thing is that the loser has to do first.
But I'm OK. I'm very interested. OK. We could also this might be softer and because it's softer, I suspect you're not going to go for it.
But we could set like a pretty far date. And if we both make it, we just both get whatever the good thing is.
OK. All right. But but I think if it's that one where like there's a potential for a double win, I think the date probably has to be pretty far.
There's some good stuff in chat. Charles in YouTube chat says Loser has to use Windows eight for a month.
Oh, not even point one. Oh, God. Yeah. Windows eight. Oh, John Wick. Loser has to shave.
Oh, I think.
I'm not going to lose. It's not going to happen.
Well, you don't want babyface Luke again. You remember the last time that was when we that was when we did the Top Gun shoot.
I think I shaved for that, didn't I? I think you shaved your whole self for that.
Never mind your face. Yeah. Yeah. Good. That was great. Yeah. Oh, I love it.
All right. We should probably jump into our next topic after telling you about our sponsors for the show today.
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All right. Let's jump right into the EU proposing to force USB-C on all device manufacturers.
So this directive in the EU announced this week would require all consumer electronics manufacturers who smell, sell smartphones, tablets, cameras, headphones, et cetera, to feature a common port USB-C in two years.
This would effectively mean that Apple would be prohibited from putting a lightning port in future iPhones if they wanted to sell them in the EU.
Apple in a statement said, we remain concerned that strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, which in turn will harm consumers in Europe and around the world.
In the past, they've argued that this switch would be worse for the environment because it renders hundreds of millions of lightning accessories obsolete, which is not a terrible point.
But also we could just, every connector and every cable will eventually be obsolete. We could just stop making lightning ones and that would be good.
Yeah, it doesn't make them obsolete right away. It's not like everyone's current lightning devices just vanish in thin air.
My biggest problem with this, and there's probably something put aside for this, I just haven't seen anything about it.
So I'm going to bring it up anyways, is when does this stop?
When does it stop?
Yeah.
Are we stuck with USB-C forever?
It's in the future. It's now 2069. There's tons of memes about the year. It's great. It's a wonderful year. No one remembers the pandemic. We've moved on and every single device in the EU still has USB-C.
Like, when does it stop? And does the next version have to be like a USB platform connector?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, the more likely move for Apple because they've been moving this direction for a very long time.
Yeah. Just move away from ports. I mean, this is really interesting. In an FCC filing that was viewed by MacRumors, Apple added a module to the Watch Series 7 that enables 60.5 gigahertz wireless data transfer.
Now, on a watch, there's no real reason that you would have to have such fast data transfer unless the intention was that that's all you got.
Because the only time you would ever really use that is during setup and synchronization.
Or that's the only time that I would think of that it would really matter. I don't think they intend to use something like that just for Wi-Fi around your house because 60 gigahertz Wi-Fi is not really useful for moving around.
And a watch is by its very nature constantly moving around. So this would be the kind of thing where you would put your watch next to your phone so they have line of sight and they would sync.
And that would be that. You kind of wouldn't touch it again.
So one thing that looks like a bit of an obstacle to this is that the lightning connector is still the fastest way to charge an iPhone, even with the launch of the new iPhone 13 and 13 Pro.
Just happened last week. I actually shot my short circuit. I was hands on with them today. Pretty sweet.
Even with the launch of those, the lightning connector is still the fastest way to charge an iPhone. You get 7.5 watts via Qi charging, 15 watts via MagSafe charging, and 20 watts over the lightning port.
So Apple would either have to get more aggressive about their charging, and actually I support their position, keeping their wireless charging speeds very conservative.
I think it's the right thing to do for consumers to protect them from their own bad habits by forcing them to charge their devices in a way that is healthier for the battery.
And you can argue with me all day. I don't care. The bottom line is that even if it's only a 2% difference a year or a 1% difference a year, that's cumulative.
And these are devices that people, especially in the case of iPhones, might use for five or six years. If you could have 6% better battery life by the end of using your device, would you want that? Would you press that button?
I'd say most people would. Why not? Who doesn't want to have extra battery life?
So I support Apple maintaining their slow wireless charging speeds, and I'll be interested to see if they have to juice them up in order to make this switch.
I mean, what they could do is they could just not be stubborn and they could put a USB-C connector on the iPhone, just like they already did on the MacBook and already did on the iPad.
So, you know, that's an alternative. But Apple can be very rigid sometimes. Like on the one hand, they can be very pragmatic and business oriented, but on the other hand, they can be very emotional, it seems.
Resistant to change. Yeah. So and we've been talking about this coming in, I feel like for literally years. Yes. And it's finally here. It took this long to get here. So you think this could essentially be the end of cables?
Yeah. Yeah, I think that could be it. Zorg 666 said, don't forget about the huge environmental impact because wireless charging is much less efficient. That is a fair point.
I mean, I would be really interested to see what the actual grid draw numbers are of people charging their phones.
I suspect it's not that big compared to running lights and drying clothes and cooking and all those other extremely high draw activities.
But I mean, waste is never better. It does concern me to see things like wireless charging pads for cars that are boasting.
Man, which one? I think it was like 80 percent efficiency charger. That's some next level laziness.
Well, I mean, do you deny that it would be pretty cool to just roll into your garage and literally never think about charging your car?
If you could never think about charging your phone, if just like as you as you wandered around your house, you had wireless charging, you know, beam transmitters and they could just charge your phone.
You just never thought about it. Yeah, that'd be sweet. That'd be sweet. And the car thing would be sweet as well. But like, yeah, that's a lot of that's a pretty gratuitous amount of waste.
I feel. Yeah, I don't even know the percentage yet. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a pretty gratuitous amount of waste.
Like sheesh. Apparently, this is as high as 92 percent plus or minus 2 percent you could handle with wireless charging. But even let's say the best case scenario.
Ninety six plus or minus two for wired. So this is a four percent difference. But on something like a car. Four percent on a car is a lot.
That's a lot. Yeah, that is definitely a larger concern for me than phones. But if you if you claim to be if you claim to be a steward of the planet.
Cutting out inefficiencies anywhere is is is a good is is difficult to argue with.
I guess is how I'm getting an electric car because you want to be kind to the environment and then getting a wireless charging pad would be a hilarious combo.
I like I kind of want to catch someone doing that. But yeah.
I don't know. That's it. All right. Microsoft announced some new search with someone in full plane chat said don't care.
Get solar. I mean, that's fair. Yeah. Producing solar panels is not.
If you have them in any ways. Yeah. Yeah.
That's a lot of the times you're going to charge your car overnight when your usage of your power is lower, I guess. And the sun is not shining.
The sun is also not out. Unless you had like unless I mean, Tesla has that cool thing where you can use your Tesla as a battery for their solar solution or whatever.
Like that's super cool. I could see something. I also think you're not I suspect you're not going to have to install an additional solar panel or an additional battery because of the four percent loss from wireless charging.
I think it's going to make essentially no difference in your actual setup. That's fair. That's fair.
Let's talk about some surface devices. The surface is gone, replaced by the surface laptop studio.
Could Microsoft make their naming scheme more confusing? Gosh, darn it. They're sure going to try.
The article here is from The Verge. And this is what it looks like.
It's basically a Surface Pro with the kickstand permanently attached to the keyboard.
You know what? It's kind of cool. It's big.
It's it's like the it's the Windows equivalent of running an iPad with one of those one of those cases that you can you can bring the iPad forward.
So it's all touch. If you want, you can go touch screen touch pad or you pull it back if you want to use the keyboard.
I don't think it's the kind of thing that I would necessarily use.
I personally know people that would, though. I'll give it that because I agree. I wouldn't use this, but I definitely know people that would.
I'm not a big touch user like I do like to use it. But after switching to the framework, which, by the way, we're talking about laptops.
I'm invested in framework computer ink. After switching to the framework, I haven't missed it too much.
I definitely do miss it. And I'm going to encourage framework to come up with a touch screen, a touch screen replacement module at some point,
at which time I will upgrade my laptop. Mark my words. That's going to happen.
That's cool. Yeah, that's pretty sweet.
So I like the touch screen, but I don't I'm not a touch screen first user. I never use a stylus.
It does happen. Yeah, I was going to say, I think it's more for like art and drafting, not necessarily just being a touch screen.
And it's going to be a super, super cool device. Yeah. For that.
It's a one hundred and twenty hertz, three by two display. What a great aspect ratio H series processor.
So you're limited to four cores, not the greatest. But it does have an RTX 3050 TI.
You could conceivably game on the thing and Thunderbolt for Alex's thoughts are I'm glad Microsoft has finally abandoned the surface book.
It was cool at first, but it's been clear for several generations that the CPU is being held back by being in the screen.
And I agree specifically because of thermal constraints where you can't let it run very hot because you can't allow a touch surface for user safety reasons to go over a certain temperature.
And the whole thing is a touch screen. Right. It would be super cool if it had an eight core CPU option to really take on the XPS 15.
But overall, looking pretty looking pretty good. The Surface Pro 8 also looks decent.
One twenty hertz, three by two again, finally has Thunderbolt for me.
I've been asking for Thunderbolt on the Surface, Surface Pro lineup since Thunderbolt two was the standard.
The Surface pen now vibrates and they announced a new Surface Pro X with an ARM processor.
This is another Alex note. Riley can check it out, but IMO, it's just a tech demo and too slow to consider actually buying.
Ouch. Ouch. Like, damn.
They also announced the new Surface Duo 2, a two screen Android phone that I guess someone might like.
Did anyone actually buy the Surface Duo 2? I want to hear from you.
Anyone in float plane chat? Did you buy a Surface Duo 2? Do you love it? Is it great?
Hit me. Come on. Tell me. Oh, vibrating pen.
OK, float plane chat. Come on. Grow up. Grow up and move on. Never.
Don't do it. Jeez. All right.
I'm waiting for you guys to I'm waiting to hear from anyone. Anyone. Flow plane chat.
I will even acknowledge you. Anyone surface do.
No. YouTube. Anyone surface duo. Come on. I haven't seen a yes anywhere.
I'm watching all three chats. Like, is that going to be one of those devices that I should buy now?
Like, try to get my hands on a Gen one one and then just leave it sealed because it's going to be this weird relic.
They only ever made like six of them and actually shipped them to customers.
Tyrant Rex says, I know someone who has a Surface Duo, but clearly as a viewer of our channel, Tyrant Rex is too tech savvy to buy a Surface Duo.
Oh, Baraboo Live. I bought a Surface Duo and used it for a year since day one.
All right. OK. All right. I think. Yeah. So they didn't include any that they're happy with.
I have technically purchased this product. The epic blacklist from Apple devices continues.
Epic is appealing. The ruling made earlier this month. Apple is blocking them from iOS until the appeal is over.
Oh, no. We talked about this last week. Whoops. All right. A new Super Mario Brothers movie.
OK. There is there is technically some new news about that, but it's it's really not very interesting.
Let's talk about the new Super Mario Brothers movie. There's a cast. There's a cast.
As far as my understanding goes, it's all voiceover, right? Yes. Yeah.
So it's all voiceover. So you're not going to see these people. I would also like to note before I go through all of the names that the voice actor for Mario, Charles Martinet.
Hopefully I'm saying his name correctly, is still alive. So and actually in this.
So those those those. That's an important thing to know before I go through it.
OK. Mario is going to be Chris Pratt. Peach is going to be Anna Taylor Joy.
Yeah. Luigi is going to be Charlie Day. Bowser is going to be Jack Black.
Now, that's just the best thing ever. That's like that's pretty good.
Jack Black as Bowser alone is just kind of everything I need to know. Nothing else matters.
Oh, by the way, Seth Rogen is Donkey Kong. So this is pretty great.
Yeah. Seth Rogen being Donkey Kong and Bowser being Jack Black, I think are both probably pretty good.
A lot of the rest of them, I can't picture their voices, so I don't know.
But yeah, Charles Martinet is going to like apparently have like bits in it, but he's not Mario, which just seems so.
Like, what are you doing? I don't know. Now, tell me something, Luke.
We weren't exactly children at the same time, but when I was a kid, there was a live action Super Mario Brothers TV show.
Oh, I thought there's a movie. Are you aware of this? I knew about the movie.
I didn't know what the TV show. It's just about the most cringe thing ever.
I would occasionally watch it. They're plumbers.
Oh, yeah. OK. I thought this was a movie. I guess it was a TV show. Sorry.
Amazing. I guess all I have to say is hopefully it's a little better than that.
And that's not Charles either.
In other monumental news, China has banned all cryptocurrency transactions. Bitcoin lost nearly two thousand dollars in value today after the announcement,
which, by the way, is not that much considering how big of a deal cryptocurrency and crypto mining was in China even just a couple of years ago.
China's continuing crackdown on cryptocurrency likely fueled in part by power and fuel shortages.
Yeah, that's that's fair enough. It's also probably fueled by control.
I mean, a non fiat currency is a threat to governmental control of their own economy.
These energy shortages seriously impacting. Yep. Beijing is apparently even asking some food producers to shut down.
So their official stance on the issue of crypto is that it's a volatile speculative investment scheme at best and a way of laundering money at worst.
The People's Bank of China says virtual currency related business activities are illegal financial activities that seriously endanger the safety of people's assets.
I mean, OK, maybe. I think it's pretty clear this is China being China and doing China things.
But do you think that China's ban could lead other nations to do the same or could it have the opposite effect?
Opposite effect? I don't think it's going to have too much of the opposite effect.
Is anyone saying it's going to have the opposite effect?
Senator Pat Toomey did a posted quite a bit on Twitter, actually, about China's authoritarian crackdown on on crypto.
This is a big opportunity for the US and, you know, free free market, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, economic liberty is good for growth, et cetera.
I mean, it's not terrible points, quite frankly.
Sure, I yeah, I don't honestly think it's going to mean much for many.
I guess I'll say it that way, because it's.
I don't think it's had as big of an impact in a ton of other countries as it has had in China.
It's a very big deal there. Right. It was a very big industry there.
And China has the. I don't know what you want to call it.
The infrastructure and engineering capability to like spin up these big Bitcoin firms and support them very quickly and efficiently.
It has the workers and the people to do it. It has the hardware output to like make the cards there, make all the hardware that they need there and set it up there.
Like they were fairly uniquely positioned to do this very quickly and they got behind it very quickly.
And then they squashed it very quickly. You know, I feel like everything there was accelerated.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's going to impact other countries too much. I think they're all going to kind of figure out their own things.
That's fair. All right. There's a couple of super chats.
We're getting some. Yeah, this this is actually.
You and Cruz wife, I didn't know you had your own account. We're getting some Bitcoin farms here in D.C. at the shut down lumber mills.
Yes, that is a thing. Oh, shut down lumber mills actually have a quite a bit of power.
That machinery takes a lot to run. So they're grabbing that power and running, running some graphics cards.
S says, Well, my drunk ass sent us a blank super chat. Here's my next try.
I would love to see a business development video on LTT about your overhead cogs. I mean, we talk about it from time to time.
We talked about our revenue sources not that long ago. I think that might satisfy your your craving there.
Can you please do you want to find by your static overlay elements? Oh, for OLED TV users.
You know what? We probably should. That's a really good idea. I should ask Ed to do an animation for this.
Yes. Are you out of time, sir? That right now? Yes. I am out of time. Can we animate the land show lower third?
OLED users are concerned about static elements. OK. Yeah, that's fair.
OK. Working on it. Let me just see if there's any other brilliant super chats like that.
There might be. But I'm sorry, I'm going to have I think I have to go.
Bullet plane question. Why don't you guys advertise full plane on LTV videos? Yeah, we should do that more often.
Yeah, probably not wrong. Sorry. But the pipe wire.
Oh, pipe wire for all audio and video making existing AV tools and discord. Really amazing. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS early next year.
I don't know if we can wait that long. We've got to go Linux now. We've got to go now.
Soda Cat says, I work in the NSFW industry professionally. I would do LTT after dark. No joke. All right.
Fair enough. Thank you for that. Nobody needs to see that. Thanks, Mac.
Maco 91. All right. Later, guys. Bye.
All right. Have fun. OK, I will. Bye bye. Bye bye.