All right, what up y'all? Welcome to the show!
What up y'all?
Yeah.
Did you become American while you were gone with your baby?
Yeah! Yeah, dog!
I guess dog is American.
American and gangster?
American and gangster. Yeah, I'm the most gangster person ever.
I'm like all rappin' and-
I was gonna say, have they seen the Stormtrooper video?
You're obviously pretty gangster. You straight up killed a guy!
Yeah, yeah, with Force Lightning, no less.
You know, the number of people who complained-
Oh my god!
That it was fake because Stormtroopers don't have Force Lightning.
Did you guys see a Stormtrooper rapping?
Yeah, exactly. It's like, let's figure out all the other things that could-
How about the Stormtrooper was wearing headphones?
So there's one thing.
How about the Stormtrooper didn't have a gun that she was firing wildly at nothing?
Although, I'm actually a believer in the conspiracy theory
that they were instructed not to hit anything.
I buy that.
Have you heard of this?
That makes sense though.
Yeah, the conspiracy theory is that the Stormtroopers were told not to hit anything
because we already know from Obi-Wan that only Imperial Stormtroopers are this precise.
I actually just re-watched A New Hope. Not special edition, not remastered.
That actually totally makes sense.
It totally makes sense.
Whoa, that blew my brain up a little bit.
Anyway, I just re-watched A New Hope with my son and I can happily say,
actually, I haven't watched it in probably at least eight years.
I've watched it a lot of times, but I haven't watched it in a long time.
It still holds up.
Really?
Yep, and my two-year-old son sat through the whole thing.
Even though it's not really that action-packed,
like the first movie he really sat through all the way was How to Train Your Dragon.
Yeah, yeah.
Like that's a pretty exciting movie.
That was one of those things where it was just playing on like a local TV network
and I went to my parents' house and I came in like half hour late.
You still haven't seen it.
I came in like half an hour late and I was supposed to be helping my mom cook
and I like kept on dragging back to like watch the TV.
I was like, this is really interesting.
It's actually a pretty good movie.
It's a fantastic movie, I love that movie.
You know what else is supposed to be really good is Guardians of the Galaxy.
I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard glowing reviews from like everybody.
Have not seen it up to this point.
You probably would have seen it.
Yeah.
Just bring like absolute newborn into the theater.
I did manage to see How to Train Your Dragon 2 before the new baby came.
We actually didn't take my son.
What?
Why?
It was date night.
You got rekt?
Well, that and we could only find a 3D showing and he's two.
Oh, 3D showing?
Yeah, no, I wouldn't do that.
Yeah, it was just one of those things and I was like...
I've heard too much crap about 3D in Little Kids.
I wanted to see it in the theater, so I'll watch it again when it's out for a DVD or whatever.
That's hilarious.
Okay.
When that happens, then that's what will happen.
So our first topic.
Yeah, we have some topics for today.
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha has been announced.
It's the least exceptional thing ever, as far as I can tell.
USB Type-C has a finalized spec, which is actually really exciting.
A hundred times more exciting than the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
Ubisoft is promising to cater more to PC gamers and pay more attention to PC gamers.
Excuse me.
Sorry.
Yeah, we've been having these problems lately.
Was that too subtle?
Bullshit.
There we go.
The Xperia Z2 survived multiple weeks under salt water, which is insane.
We'll talk more about that later.
Like meters of salt water.
But without further ado...
Come on!
Can I never get this right?
Were there even technical difficulties when I was gone?
Uh, yes, there was.
Remember, the screen sharing worked.
I don't remember anything.
Oh, well, I told you.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm back in the AVerMedia now.
It's all good.
All I had to do was unplug it and plug it back in.
And then it was fine, actually.
Oh, yeah, guys, we have a sponsor this week.
Squarespace is back!
10% off with author code lines from our guys.
Squarespace is the fantastic, easy, inexpensive,
scalable, and beautiful way to have your own website.
You know, like Geocities, except...
Not the 90s.
No, like, crazy flashing RGB animations and all this junk.
Squarespace believes the web shouldn't look like garbage.
That's a big difference.
I mean, the 90s web had its charm, to be clear.
I mean, does...
Okay.
Space Jam still exists, right?
I think Space Jam 2 is, like, sort of coming.
Is the Space Jam site still up?
I think so, yeah.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, Space Jam's website.
No way.
100%.
This has been a thing for a long time.
The website has never gone down, and it's still...
Well, like, I'm sure it's had its downtime, but it's like, it still exists.
And you can go to the site map where they have, like,
little mini descriptions of each section, like people used to do.
Oh, my goodness.
There's a few websites that have still existed.
Press Box, Shuttle, Jam Central, Planet B Ball, Lunar Tunes, Jump Station,
Warner Brothers Store, Behind the Jam, Site Map, Stellar Souvenirs, Junior Jam, and the lineup.
Ridonkulous.
Alright, so I have an early straw poll for you guys.
This is...
Actually, I've got to get the...
I'm not logged in.
Can you never remember my login?
Thank you.
That's exactly what I wanted to do.
Twitch on my computer at home will tell me that my login information is incorrect,
and then if I just click login again, it's like, okay, good job.
What?
I'm gonna go on my dashboard.
I'm gonna post this straw poll.
I want you guys to check this out.
Okay, so speaking of the internet in the...
Not the 90s, but certainly the early 2000s.
Does anyone but me remember The Palace?
This is Prehabbo Hotel, okay?
We're talking Palace, not Habbo Hotel.
If you were a Habbo Hotel kid, then you were basically as cool as my sister.
That straw poll.
Alright, so guys, check that out.
I'm curious to see the results here.
That is the most hardcore spam I think I've ever seen.
So apparently, I am like the only person in the entire universe who remembers The Palace.
I remember The Palace.
I don't think I ever was on it, but I knew The Palace.
Oh, The Palace was awesome.
Like, it was...
Okay, it was kind of...
If they had figured out a monetization model for avatars,
they would have been, you know, 10 plus years ahead of in-game items.
Yeah.
In terms of...
Because the way that avatars worked in The Palace was,
generally speaking, people shared them back and forth.
You couldn't really just rip them off people because the way that they worked was the,
you know, you'd like...
You built them up on your guy and it was kind of this weird thing.
So there were sets and then some people would be mismatched.
So everyone had like...
There was like the one chick with the skater shorts
and like the one dude with the skater pants or whatever.
And so you could like mix and match them so they look different anyway.
The point is...
I don't know what the point is.
The point is I'm old and no one remembers the things I remember.
So you got that from the Space Jam things still existing.
We're just talking about old internet stuff.
No, no, I already...
Homestar Runner!
Someone said Homestar Runner in the chat.
Yeah, Homestar Runner, man.
There's a Wikipedia entry update.
Apparently, they released a video at some point like teasing that...
Burn in aging all the people.
Apparently, there's going to be another strong bad email at some point.
But that was like three years ago, I think.
And it still doesn't happen.
So yeah, we'll see.
All right.
So speaking of things that should have happened three years ago
and never really managed to happen.
Samsung is finally releasing...
Well, I'm just going to sign out of my forum account here.
Galaxy beta?
Yeah, galaxy beta.
No, no, this is pre-beta.
This be alpha, dog.
All right, the screen share here.
So this was originally posted by Nine Shadow on the forum.
And it is finally a metal phone from Samsung.
Is it called alpha because it's not ready yet?
And it's funny because I don't think they could have made this look
any more like an iPhone if they had tried.
Now that Android has on-screen buttons,
you have just one home button in the middle.
You got a speaker grill, a front camera, and like side buttons.
Wow.
Like I know they already weren't really that different, but that's pretty close.
But it's pretty...
If their button at the bottom was circular, then...
I know, right?
But at least...
Okay, so it's got a 4.7 inch display.
It's got a metal housing.
It's got their Exynos Octa-Core processor.
So four cores at 1.8, four cores at 1.3.
It has two gigs of RAM, 32 gigs of internal storage.
It supports LTE Advanced, which is nice.
But it's got a fingerprint sensor, speaking of...
Yeah, really.
Yeah, a 12 megapixel rear camera, metal building materials.
And it is...
The rumored street price for off-contract is 800 US dollars.
Now I left out a couple of key specs there.
That 4.7 inch screen is a 1280x720 screen.
And I'll be the first.
Like I've talked about this on the show before.
I don't think we need Quad HD 2560x1445 inch screens.
I think it's unnecessary.
I think it adds to cost, power consumption, and reduces battery life.
And otherwise just generally doesn't really have any benefit.
But you gotta at least try.
And there's something to say for 1080x720 on a phone.
Yes, yes, 1080 is noticeable.
Whereas, you know, 1440, maybe not that noticeable.
720p is definitely lower.
It also only has an 1860 milliamp hour battery.
Yeah, I noticed you skipped over that.
And I was like, I know why.
Because I'm about to lower the hate!
Boom!
And no microSD expansion.
I mean, we're talking a flagship phone.
When pretty much everyone else has reversed on the whole,
yes, we're not going to have microSD because people should
use up their entire internal storage for their music libraries.
That never made any sense.
Super dumb.
Super dumb.
I mean, I don't necessarily agree that phone makers
need to allow people to install apps on an external SD card.
No.
And there are good reasons for that.
SD cards are not reliable.
They're not fast.
So, fine.
I get the experience or whatever.
That's fine.
But let me put my music and pictures on it.
I don't want to be using up my stupid 16 gigs of internal storage.
That's all I ever used it for anyways.
Exactly.
I just use a direct storage device,
plug it in the computer, put freaking music,
what songs, whatever on it, take it out, put it in the phone.
So it's freaking awesome.
So this doesn't have that.
And just otherwise is not very impressive.
I mean, okay, it's less than seven millimeters thick and,
excuse me, thin.
Oh.
I hate that so much.
Are you 59 years young?
Yeah, I know, right?
God, that kills me every time.
Like, okay.
Maybe when you're 59 you'll understand.
No, I'll still call myself 59 years old.
Um, or just 59 years.
Or that.
59 years of swag, dog.
Uh, so, right.
And it's only 115 grams.
So it is pretty light, especially for a metal phone.
But I think that Samsung's marketing video
really does tell us everything that we needed to know about this phone.
This phone has nothing to do with how good it is.
It has to do with this completely stupid way
that some guy has it on his mixing console.
It has to do with, for some reason,
someone like moving their hands around like this
has their phone propped up at the edge of the table on its side.
And it has to do with storing it like that for some reason.
They all do that.
Well, they're showing that the side is flat, I guess.
Oh, who cares?
You were not the first to do that.
No.
Oh, wait, they're all walking with it.
Hold on, hold on, the suspense.
Oh, look at how well it goes with that chic little...
Let's make sure she carries it in a dangerous position outside of the purse.
Yeah.
Where it might potentially fall.
Yeah, don't put a case on it or anything.
No, of course not.
So pretty much this phone is targeted towards people
who were never going to care about the spec anyway.
But the thing is that the thing that I have to respect Apple for
is if you're going to make something that's a fashion accessory,
an iPhone is still a wicked fast phone.
It's still got the horses.
And I personally think it looks better than that.
Yeah, I've never liked the Samsung button on the bottom
and it always has that wobbling issue.
Well, maybe this one doesn't.
Maybe, but they've all had it so far.
But yeah, you're right, it might not.
I don't know.
It comes in five colors, black, white, gold, silver and blue.
I'm actually trying to get HTC to send me a pink 1M8.
Really?
Oh, I am like super stoked on if I could get my hands on one of those.
Anyway, so the only pricing we actually have is 599 euros.
So it's possible this will land at 599 US dollars.
That happens a lot where there's no currency conversion between territories.
I always feel bad for other places when that happens.
Well, remember, they also get paid in that currency.
So like a competitive minimum wage is not going to be $10 an hour here
and $6.72 an hour or whatever, but it isn't typically.
I don't know.
So I have no argument here.
In a country with a similar economy,
it'll be similarly equivalent in terms of the actual number on the end.
Sometimes, not always.
Okay, so...
I don't think that works for people in bad economies,
because when you're making like...
When a phone costs like millions of...
That's what I mean.
Like in similarly developed economies.
Okay, so...
I have a segue.
For a phone that costs $800, at least they're not as bad people as OnePlus One.
Oh, right.
This is happening.
I forgot about this.
Happy baby to you.
Happy baby to you.
Happy baby dear...
Does this have any more genitals on it?
Yeah.
Happy baby to you.
Okay, thank you.
Here we go.
So it's going to be hard to show this to the people watching,
but it says congratulations on making a human with your genitals.
I'm not sure what they were expecting me to make with my genitals.
Maybe a little like...
You know, like a little thing with like sunglasses and a big nose?
And a mustache?
I could make that.
Oh god.
Maybe not on this show.
But I don't think...
Yeah, I think we get banned off Twitch for that.
I think so.
I'm pretty sure that's not allowed.
Yeah.
Well, thank you very much guys.
So this is from like Mape and Ghost and all those guys.
Sorry guys, I don't remember all the names included, but we'll get you those later.
I know Mape is the one that did like almost all of the organization stuff for it.
Well, thank you.
Thank you to whoever came up with putting the word genitals on my cake too.
I appreciate that.
Is that you?
No, it was not me.
All I did was help organize the pickup and stuff like that.
I didn't name it.
I had no other...
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you guys.
I actually thought we were going to be celebrating my birthday
because this is the last show before my birthday as well.
Ah.
Well, then also happy birthday.
No, don't sing that song.
Yeah, you can't sing that song.
It's not allowed.
No, we didn't sing the song.
We sang happy baby to you.
Happy birthday to you.
I think the melody is actually included.
Uh oh.
No, no, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
O balls.
Well, thank you guys.
Thank you guys.
I appreciate it.
I will take that home to my wife who recently had a baby
and I'm sure could use some cake at this point.
Yeah, she watches the show sometimes.
You better watch yourself.
I mean...
Yeah, gracefully.
Little tiny fork.
Yeah.
Delicious.
Delightful.
Couldn't possibly eat another bite.
Okay.
So it was Ghost, Useless Bread, Mape, S-T-R-N-S-C-O-R, Mape, and Lo.
Thank you guys.
Appreciate that.
There we go.
Okay.
So anyways, my previous segue was it may cost about $800 and be somewhat useless,
but at least the company behind it isn't as bad as One Plus One.
Oh, One Plus.
What are you guys doing?
It's like, is the plan to create as much negative publicity as possible?
Negative publicity is still publicity, I guess.
Yeah, that's true, but I mean, come on.
We are talking about it.
So this was originally posted by Alex Goes High on the forum and basically...
It was a contest exclusively for women where it asked women to take a picture of themselves
with the One Plus logo visible on either a piece of paper or drawn somewhere on the body.
The 50 most well-liked ladies would get a t-shirt and a code so that they could buy a One Plus.
One Plus dropped a ladies no nudity warning.
Which is just another way of saying we want you to get
as unclothed as possible without it being considered nudity.
Well, yeah, because if you think about it, it's most liked.
So what do you expect?
Yeah, and it invites the, you know, the sub-caverns of the internet and...
To come in and spam and do whatever.
Whenever you host a big poll, you're always going to bring in that.
But whenever you post a poll in this style, it's going to happen way more.
Yeah.
Way, way, way more.
So basically it's super tasteless.
Yeah, super, super, super tasteless.
A lot of women came in and started doing pictures where they would have like the One Plus logo
and then don't be sexist and then like not be wearing super revealing clothing.
I think that was the general idea.
Yeah, there was some of that.
But at this point Cyanogen has like denounced the whole thing.
Cyanogen exactly said we value all of our users
and do not support any contest that objectifies people.
And the contest thread has since been taken down.
I mean, you know what?
It would be one thing if they were all for equality and they just said,
take a picture of yourself with One Plus.
And if people submitted, you know, scantily clad, whatever they were going to do on their own,
of their own volition, if people just are like,
yeah, you know what, I'm down.
I want to post a picture of myself on the internet.
That's their right and they can do that.
But they specifically led people down the path to believe that that's what they were looking for.
Exclusively for women and in the thing that says somewhere on your body.
Somewhere on your body.
Or on a piece of paper.
So they were specifically asking for that.
And then again, it would be a whole other ball of wax
if they were actually giving them a phone or something.
Here's a chance to buy one because we're douchebags.
People keep asking me for a review of this phone.
And honestly, I just don't even want to.
We got close like a day or two ago.
Yeah, we were kind of maybe going to do it because if one fell into our lap and maybe
then it maybe would have happened.
But at this point, no, yeah, I don't think so.
Like I just if we did, half the review would be like,
yeah, they're kind of douches with their invite only system.
And yeah, they're kind of douches with their objectifying women thing.
So and breaking perfectly good phones instead of encouraging people to recycle.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's made well.
Yeah, I guess.
And OK Google now support isn't there, but you can patch it in and blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's your review.
There's the whole review.
That's all you really need to know.
Is it?
We should do a series.
All you really need to know by Luke.
It's just like 30 seconds long.
It's made well, but some things are broken, but you can fix most of them.
But they're kind of a douchebag company.
So it's a pretty good phone if you're OK with ignoring the company
and you're OK with patching things in.
Thanks for watching.
I had an idea for a segment that I wanted to start doing.
And now I've totally forgotten what it was.
Not the LSD segment, right?
No, no, not that one.
It was it was going to be something else.
Shoot, it was a really good idea.
Ah, oh, well.
All right.
So Microsoft happens every time, so it's hardly news.
We're not going to spend a lot of time on it,
but Microsoft and Sony caught using PCs to showcase games at Gamescom.
Not new, but a continued trend, which is still worth talking about.
So Microsoft decided, as usual, to camouflage a number of PCs
in order to showcase one or even more of its titles.
So there was a game crash.
And apparently this was running on a GeForce PC
because we see a GeForce Experience update down here.
And then, of course, there's an Xbox console that is obviously not doing anything.
I mean, the thing about this is, guys, you got to understand this makes sense
because devs I mean, what you you expect to walk into a game studio
and like everyone has like monitors on their desk and like Xbox is next.
No, the real work gets done on a PC.
So the real testing is going to get done on a PC.
You're not going to you're not going to do like a build version of the game,
put it on a disk and like put it in a console every time you want to test something.
It's not how that works.
So, yes, especially in development, games are going to be showcased on PCs.
Yeah, because they're just better.
I think like they'll have consoles.
They're obviously going to have to test it on the console,
but like the mass majority of the development.
Yeah, like all of their test builds, like you were talking about, will be on a PC.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're not going to have I'm not saying they're not going to have consoles.
In fact, talking to Joel from MediGeek, the channelizer guys with the spectrum analysis thing,
they were telling me that one of the guys that they've worked with in the past
was a major game development studio that had a big problem
because they had so many Xboxes that even though the wireless controller works kind of like Bluetooth
where it jumps channels all the time to avoid interfering with anything,
they had so many of them that it just created broadband interference in 2.4 gigahertz.
So nothing else could function.
Oh, that's awesome.
Just jumps but lands on them on each other all the time.
Yeah, it's horrible.
It's like leapfrog with multiple thousands of people.
So Ori and the Blind Forest is the only game from Microsoft that was proven to be running on PC.
It is speculated that others were running on PC.
And then Sony was also caught showing need for speed on PC.
The amount of years that I've been at PAX, there's countless amounts of time
where you get a peek in in a cabinet and you can see a console under it.
I mean a PC under it.
Countless amounts of time.
There's even been times where people just straight up have like a grill
on the side of their box thing that's under the TV and you can look through the grill.
And you can look through the grill and see a computer.
And it's like, K, you're not even hiding it at all.
So like, yeah, I don't know.
All right.
Speaking of, I don't know what to call this.
Ubisoft pledges to take PC more seriously.
Ubisoft said today that it is seeking to take Windows PC gaming way more seriously
as the platform continues to make gains against rivals.
You know, I think as PC gamers, that headline alone is enough to kind of give me pause.
It's like,
So you're only doing this because there's a lot of us.
You're only doing this because in spite of everything that the entire
AAA gaming industry has done to alienate us, it's still growing.
So I guess there's nothing you can do.
So at the last possible second, as the growth continues to be uncontrolled and amazing,
you're like,
Oh, okay.
Yeah, we were on board all along.
Care about you because you have money.
I used to like them.
So basically they're saying they're focused more on the needs of PC gamers.
They're going to have simplified DRM activation, greater commitment to multi-platform releases,
which is a good thing.
And I am happy if it happens, if it happens.
I seriously doubt it.
And the thing about a multi-platform release is that we expect to actually get a proper release,
not one that gets patched three weeks later,
a la Watch Dogs and had a bunch of hidden content in it that you just
like, I don't even there wasn't even a DLC plan.
It just was turned off, turned off.
I mean, that's a whole other thing.
Like, hey, pay another 10 bucks for like the ultra extreme, amazing, high fidelity version.
You know, I think a lot of people would actually go for that.
There was a post.
I don't remember by who at all.
I think it was someone from Bungie saying that, like, if it's so aggressive right now
with DLC and microtransactions that we could probably sell resolutions to you.
And it's like, I didn't say it was good to be clear.
I said that they could probably get away with it.
What are we talking about?
Anyway, so blah, blah, blah.
They'll focus more on the needs of PC gamers, greater commitment to multi-platform releases.
We're doing our best to bring our games to PC at the same time as the console version.
So Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4 will come to the PC simultaneously.
Not the two games simultaneously, but with the console simultaneously.
Yeah, I'm most worried about the thing actually working or being optimized properly.
I've said in the past when there's these like massive, ridiculous Assassin's Creed delays for PC.
I'm like, it's fine if it works.
And then it like rarely, really does.
And it's always like this craptastic port, whatever.
All right.
So Ubisoft revenues from PC in spite of, you know,
all the crummy stuff have gone from 11% of their total revenue to 15%.
So on the one hand, at 11% of their total company revenue,
I guess I can understand why they didn't give any cares.
Yeah, but their revenue is very split if you think about it.
And the thing about that too is, well, of course it was going to be 11%
if you don't give anyone the option to buy the bloody game on the platform.
Yeah, that happens.
A lot of times it's extremely delayed.
Like some of these Assassin's Creed delays have been, I think, like six months long.
Yeah.
Not super surprising if they happen to have a console and happen to buy it for that
because they wanted to play it sometime near its release at all.
Another thing is they're divvied up into web, mobile, I believe.
Even some phone stuff, all consoles, including Wii and Wii U, PC.
Yeah, last gen consoles.
They're everywhere, right?
So even 11% is probably still not too bad, but yeah.
All right, so of course, big news this week was
the passing of beloved actor, comedian Robin Williams.
WoW fans, given that he was such an avid gamer in his life,
have asked for a WoW tribute.
It wouldn't be the first time that Blizzard's done an NPC
as a tribute to a person or some kind of event.
So not a new thing at all.
And basically the only news we have right now is that Blizzard is indeed listening.
And they did send out a tweet, if I could just find the tweet.
Blizzard says, thanks to Robin Williams and we'll see you in game.
So that's really nice.
I mean, I just, you know, I hope that it's not so soon that it's just kind of piling on
because the thing that I think a lot of people don't really think about is
how the family might react to an in-game representation.
I mean, as long as they're okay with it, then that's...
Well, this is slightly jumping, but did you hear about how people were treating Zelda?
Uh, no.
People were treating her incredibly poorly and like attacking her for not having enough
pictures of her dad and all this kind of stuff on Twitter.
So she fairly publicly left Twitter.
She's like, I'm uninstalling it from everything and I'm kind of gone for now.
And then Twitter's like, yeah, we're going to work on our harassment policies.
Because it was like pretty bad.
I can't believe people.
To be clear, Zelda is not the game.
Zelda is Zelda Williams, Robin Williams' daughter.
Yeah.
She's what, 25, I think?
I don't know.
Something like that.
So anyway, the petition to get him added to WoW as an NPC has almost 11,000 signatures.
And so, yeah, I'll be glad to see some kind of meaningful tribute,
as long as it's not something that's upsetting to the family.
And knowing Blizzard, I wouldn't be too surprised if they talked to them first.
I made myself so sad today when we were filming an NCIX PC video.
Because at the end, I was like, there was kind of like a like a salesy pitchy thing at the end.
And I was like, something, something, something on sale today.
Come on down.
I was like, oh, now I'm sad.
Because that's an Aladdin bit from the very beginning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just, I made myself uncomfortable and sad.
That's no good.
Like, this is kind of sucky.
I grew up on like Mrs. Doubtfire, man.
I know.
Yeah.
I saw all this stuff too.
Yeah.
And I even used to watch like all of his comedy and everything.
Apparently the internet absolutely exploded with torrent downloads of Robin Williams stuff.
I'm sure it did.
Um, so this TechAge article moving along to sort of less sad, but also kind of annoying.
Uh, apparently this one's been taken down, but the, uh, the gist of it was gathered by
our, our, you know, article sleuths before the whole thing was disappeared.
So DDR4 will be just as expensive as we feared it would be.
60 to 70% more expensive than DDR3, based on crucial prices, which are on newegg.com
as a pre-order.
Um, both the four by eight gig 2133 and four by eight gig 2,400 megahertz kits are listed
at 520 US dollars.
Wow.
Yeah, that's fine.
Uh, I mean, it doesn't really matter.
I don't think there's anything.
It's on TechGauge if anyone cares.
So for whatever reason, 2,133 and 2,400 megahertz are priced the same.
So our kits with and without heat spreaders, although, um, that actually makes sense.
That's a trend that we've seen in the past because when the pricing is so high for memory,
the memory makers actually have some margin.
So they don't nickel and dime you on the heat spreader.
That's legitimately what happens.
They're just like, yeah, whatever.
Cause the heat spreader costs like what, 40 cents or something like that.
Like they're not expensive.
But when we're talking like, I mean, I've seen module prices in, in my time fall down
as low as I think NCIX was buying Samsung sticks of DDR1 or DDR2 for like $9 and 25
cents or something like that.
Like we're at that price.
Yeah.
40 cents makes a difference.
So at lower prices, it, it tends to really matter.
And then very expensive heat spreaders will still cost money.
Things like dominator, platinum heat spreaders.
Those are expensive.
Yeah.
Those actually cost money to make.
You have to pay for lights and clear panel and all the metal and all that kind of stuff.
So, uh, okay.
We just got confirmation from our potentially new employee who, uh, you still need to meet
and kind of sign off on.
But he said, yes, he can probably get some contract stuff done for us in the meantime.
Cause we are in a little bit of trouble over here at Linus media group.
Taran has an injury to his arm and needs to take some time off.
And Brandon's going on vacation to Mexico next week.
So we are down to shooter slash editors.
So we brought in a guy named David part time.
Who's a friend of Brandon's.
And then we are, we are adding another, another head because we have no idea how long
Taran will be gone.
David and I, I almost just leaked the name of a video.
David has edited a video that, um, that I did very recently and it was actually pretty
good.
So you guys will see that fairly soon.
Oh yeah.
David's done work for us before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like quite a lot.
I can, you can like, if I don't tell you which one it is, you probably won't be able
to figure it out.
Yep.
All right.
So speaking of high speed memory, original poster for this is Mike TZ.
And then we've got a promo video, which is very exciting.
So this is over on the Kingston HyperX channel.
So 4620 megahertz HyperX predator memory is a thing.
Now to be clear, that world record was set with a single four gig stick cooled by liquid
nitrogen.
So this memory basically doesn't actually exist.
In fact, the, uh, the, the kits that they are going to make out of the same, you know,
chips and with the same binning process aren't even for sale yet.
But, um, I guess it goes to show you if you want to buy expensive memory, there's probably
not much in terms of compelling reasons to spend that money on DDR4 instead of high speed
DDR3 at this point.
That happens every time though.
It happens every time we see a last hurrah and we see lower pricing and then we see it
eventually go away and then we reach price parity and then et cetera, et cetera.
And around the time Intel releases an actual mainstream platform.
So around the time we see Broadwell, that's when we'll see that price parity in all likelihood.
Yeah.
But this was on a board that's specifically designed for overclocking from Gigabyte.
Like it's totally barren of like features and stuff.
It's just an overclocking board.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
Speaking of Intel's upcoming platforms, silent laptops may be coming with Broadwell.
So this was originally tweeted at me by Alejo Mr. Nokia.
Okay.
The original article is in Spanish, but Google translate is magic and yeah.
Although it's not the translated version.
It doesn't seem to be working for me right now.
It can give you a translate thing.
Yeah, it's okay.
It doesn't matter.
So basically we are going to be seeing chips that potentially require no additional cooling.
Intel is doing a lot of bragging lately about their 14 nanometer process,
which they'll be using to manufacture these upcoming Broadwell Y chips
and the impressive gains in performance,
as well as power consumption that they've made over the last few years.
So core M will be a 14 nanometer chip based on Broadwell.
Intel claims it's twice as fast as core models that were introduced in 2010,
seven times better graphics performance and with power consumption that is four times smaller.
So that means you could achieve double the battery life with a battery that's half the capacity.
That's pretty beast.
Which is some pretty simple math, but impressive nonetheless.
So yeah, cool.
We're going to see a whole new class of devices.
I mean, imagine this, this was something someone tweeted at me this week was what if you could
build a shield portable?
That's actually just a windows PC.
Like if we could get something that small that has a built-in h.264 decoder.
So you could just run steam in home streaming.
That would be pretty sick actually.
And do a lot of other stuff because you could have a browser or you could have whatever, right?
So you can even view if you want it to be like a super, super business loser, dude.
You could like view PowerPoints.
You can do whatever.
I view PowerPoints.
Sometimes PowerPoints have useful information in them.
I make PowerPoints, so I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot as well.
Not that big of a deal.
Good.
I hate you.
I very recently pinned it to my start bar so I could see recently created items.
Speaking of upcoming Intel CPUs, there is an erratum or whatever you want to have.
I actually, I've never heard that word said out loud.
Okay, well the point is that Intel has had to turn off a feature called TSX
that was first announced back in 2012.
So all previous processors that have this feature
are going to have it turned off with an upcoming microcode update.
So if you update the BIOS of your motherboard, for example,
to get better memory overclocking or some new feature or something like that.
Improve stability.
By default, it will disable this feature unfortunately.
So that stands for transactional synchronization extensions.
Let's just ignore that E there.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't worry too much about the E. TSX sounds much cooler.
As long as we don't call it TSA, then yeah.
Then no one will hate it.
It's not good.
I mean, it's one of those things where for most users, it's probably not that big of a deal.
But this was going to be really interesting in terms of multi-core processor performance
over the next little while.
And unfortunately, with the upcoming sort of new has well, whatever we're going to,
whatever, it's NDA.
So with the upcoming potential new platform that could be coming sometime
in the future ever.
Well, OK, we all know it's coming eventually.
Yeah, I haven't said anything that's not not too bad actually.
Yeah.
So we all know it's coming.
So anyway, so it won't be there for that.
And even the first Broadwell Y, those super low power processors
will not have it fixed yet.
But Intel is, of course, working on it.
So there you go.
To be clear, guys, this kind of stuff happens all the time.
It happens every generation.
I'm not saying it's good.
It's super sucky that a feature that has had started to gain traction.
I mean, that's the thing is Intel or AMD or Nvidia or whoever is going to release a feature
with a product like, let's say, DirectX 10 compatibility.
And then they're going to get an install base of people who can support that feature.
And then software developers are going to get on board and create software that leverages it.
So this sets TSX back a generation and a half or so, which is a bummer.
It is.
But they kind of need to go through that process because no matter how much debugging you do,
once you get a mass install base, that's when you really see how stable your stuff is.
Yeah, but mostly Intel doesn't have this issue.
They do, yeah.
Mostly.
So there you go.
All right.
So speaking of reasons to hate Ubisoft.
Yeah, well, okay, sure.
This was originally posted on the forum by Johners, and he used some pretty strong language.
Gee, Johners, I don't know if that language belongs on the land show here.
Let's just go ahead and keep things somewhat PG.
We're going to not display that on screen right now.
Yeah, sounds good.
Do you want to handle this one?
Sure, okay.
So Ubisoft has confirmed the presence of microtransactions during their Gamescom presentation of Assassin's
Creed Unity, which will essentially allow you to fast track things like upgrades.
Do they say anything specifically what you're going to be able to fast track in here?
I don't think so.
Yeah, it's a straightforward way to pay for in-game items.
So essentially, instead of doing all the work in the game to get something, you can just
be like, I want it.
I can't, I don't know.
Okay, riddle me this, because I had a thought while I was looking at this article.
You had a thought?
I had a thought.
One thought, it's not many thoughts, mind you.
How far away do you think we are from someone offering an in-game microtransaction for,
let's say, a game like Tomb Raider?
Okay, so you go into an optional tomb.
I just finished Tomb Raider 2013.
There's like five optional tombs.
I told you, right?
And each of them is like one puzzle.
It's really short.
It's like, figure out the pulley.
And they're like all the same.
It's a pretty good game, but you get to the end and you're like, what?
And I'm only like 60% complete, but I think that I just have to go find relics and crap.
I'm not going to do that.
It's stupid.
Anyway, and the relics don't even have any significance.
I mean, the audio logs are kind of cool, but I already know what happened because the audio
logs are just hints about what's going to happen.
Anyway, anyway, anyway.
So how far away do you think we are from a microtransaction where you walk into the
tomb, you walk into the tomb and it's just like press O to just have Lara just do the
thing and press X to try to solve it yourself.
Oh, God.
That makes sense because they're doing that on mobile games, right?
And is it really any different from buying a strategy guide?
That's pretty intense.
Now, OK, the strategy guide for more like 20 bucks or more.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely not cheap.
The strategy guide for Morrowind I actually thought was pretty cool because it was written
like you were kind of having a conversation.
Sure, but a microtransaction could be I know some fairy could be really well animated and
if you want it, you did a really good job to pay for me to come help you solve this
puzzle.
Can I flash my boobies for you?
How's your day going?
I can show you how to do this now.
No, like the reason why I liked it is you could use it to just show you where things
were so you could like find the cave and then you could just do it all on your own.
But it did also have these solutions for it.
Yes, it did.
Yes, it did.
So there was that.
And you could always have like varying levels of microness.
So you could have like an ultra microtransaction that just reveal a nearby optional dungeon.
I can't beat you.
You're right.
Damn it.
I still like player's guides more than damn it.
So, okay.
And to be clear, guys, I'm as anti microtransactions as anyone other than buying my ship in Star
Citizen.
I have never purchased a microtransaction.
No horse armor, no jetpacks in Jetpack Joyride.
I earn my stuff or I don't play the game.
That simple.
But unfortunately, not everyone has that kind of discipline.
So we have to deal with this stuff.
And you know what?
If I was in Ubisoft's position, I would do exactly the same thing.
And you know, I'm still totally against this.
People want it.
They're asking for it.
And they'll pay for it.
And the people who don't want it don't have to buy it.
So it's kind of win-win.
It's like, okay, realistically, are you going to not play Assassin's Creed based on this?
Come on.
It's a single player game, right?
So like, you can decide not to and you can decide not to.
The balance doesn't really matter.
It's a single player game.
One thing that does bug me is if they make things unnecessarily hard just to get people
to pay the microtransaction.
Yeah, but lots of games are unnecessarily hard.
If anything, that would be a return to difficulty for PC gaming and a very positive step.
But like, bam!
No, not necessarily.
Because what if it's like nigh impossible?
What if they're like, oh yeah, the best store in the game is Infinite Money, essentially.
Or you can buy it for two bucks.
Why do you need that item?
Because it's the best store in the game.
You're obviously going to desire it.
I don't, but sure.
But like, a lot of games are about collecting and making yourself badass.
If you really think about it, you can beat all of Assassin's Creed with the beginner
swords if you really wanted to.
But you want to deck yourself out with the pistol swords and all those super badass swords
that you can get throughout the game.
One thing about it being an Assassin's Creed that I don't necessarily mind, and before
people will destroy me on this, I'm still totally against it.
But the fact that it's Assassin's Creed makes it kind of hilarious.
Because you can buy the best sword from the store really early on.
Especially if you don't just straight plow through the main quest.
If you go and do some other things, you can rack up the money to buy the best sword from
the store really quickly.
So I don't know, I've never really seen it as a problem.
Like I have a buddy who in every game he ever plays, he doesn't start the main quest right
away.
He kind of roams around and tries to experience the game.
And he was able to buy the best sword from the store before he even really started the
main quest once you have free roam.
Of course, you have to unlock free roam first by going through the main quest for a while.
But still, I don't know.
Money has never really been that hard to acquire in Assassin's Creed, and you've always seemed
to have insane amounts of it.
Even in, what was it, Brotherhood or Revelations, where you have to buy all those shops everywhere
and it's kind of this insane little game.
You always have abundant amounts of money, and buying items was never really a problem.
We're going to have to tone down our Assassin's Creed discussion.
Apparently no one cares about Assassin's Creed.
Wasn't going to play it and don't care.
Says 40% of our audience.
And then, so most people don't care between wasn't going to play it and don't care and
was going to play it.
Still going to play it.
That's about 70%.
And then another 25% of you or so, weren't going to play it.
But you're mad anyway, but they didn't lose any money.
So a mere 8% of you were planning to play Assassin's Creed Unity and are not going to
play it now because there are microtransactions in it.
So basically, if Ubisoft manages to increase their average sell price of the game by even
10%, and that's down to 7% now, by even 10%, then they missed out on nothing because you
guys didn't play.
That might be pretty hard if you think about it.
If you think about how much money people spend on hats, a 10% increase in their...
Yeah, but there isn't near infinite amount of items like there is with hats.
Or maybe there will be.
Or maybe there will be lots of different stuff.
I don't know.
We'll see.
You only need a few people to buy some crazy ship for 20 bucks.
If you spend what, $6?
If you spend $6 in terms of buying stuff with microtransactions, you need 10 people for
each replacement person.
That's a fair amount.
That's a lot of microtransactions.
Yeah, you have to average $6 per person.
But then remember, there's always the crazy guys that spend 100, 200 bucks on the best
ship and the best...
I know.
What I'm saying was this wasn't necessarily possible.
There's been microtransactions in Assassin's Creed games.
That's another thing that I don't think people necessarily realize with this.
In the previous Assassin's Creed game, you could unlock the quest finder thing or whatever,
which showed every single possible quest point on the map.
Right.
So you just go to it.
And every single quest point, every single rare fishing point, every single treasure
point, every single whatever, it would show it all on the map.
All this kind of stuff has existed before, maybe just not in this form.
So I don't know.
But it wouldn't have been possible to spend 200 bucks before.
Maybe it is now.
I don't know.
Especially because it's fast tracked for items.
I could see it being a lot.
Because if you fast tracked every item, and if they made it first, somehow if they made
a sequence of items instead of just being able to buy it directly from the store, then
yeah.
Whoa.
All right.
So basically, here we go.
Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer.
Comments about resolution.
So this is from computerandvideogames.com.
Here we go.
Interview, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And basically, the summary is...
Let's just go ahead and go back to here.
Frame rate to me is significantly more important than resolution to gaming.
Okay.
Okay.
I can dig that, except that there's a threshold for both.
Like, if your frame rate is 23 frames per second, or like, you know, sure, let's pick
on 24 frames per second because that's not good enough for games.
So if your frame rate is 24 frames per second, and you're running at a resolution of
4K, I would say yes.
You need to tone down your resolution.
You need to get that frame rate up to 30 minimum, and like, hopefully a little higher.
If your frame rate is 45, and you're running at 792p, then you need to amp up that resolution,
maybe settle in at 40 frames per second or something like that.
Like, it's a balancing game, and it's going to depend on the style of game as well.
For a Twitch combat type game, yeah, frame rate is going to be extremely, extremely important.
Whereas for a more cinematic or exploration style game like Skyrim, you are going to want
I know a lot of people in Skyrim that have massively sacrificed frame rate to make their
game look ridiculously amazing because you can kind of do that with mods, especially
if you run Nexus instead of just Workshop.
So I don't remember where I was going with this.
Right, okay, so another quote from the interview is reaching parity with our partners has been
important.
In the end, I don't want it to be about a number because 1080p isn't some mythical perfect
resolution, and frame rate to me is significantly more important to gameplay than resolution,
and the mix of those two, which brings the right art style and freedom.
So there's certain genres, like racing games, where hitting 1080p 60fps is important and
expected, but there are other genres where I'd rather use the cycles to put more effects
on screen or better lighting.
So basically, I think he's interpreting the whole 1080p 60fps thing wrong because he's
saying 1080p isn't some mythical perfect number.
I don't think anyone has ever said that.
1080p is a bare minimum.
Yes, they're saying it should be at least 60fps and at least 1080p.
You're reading it wrong, buddy.
I mean, yes, I do understand that more graphical detail is nice and it's cool and it's good.
And we've proven that it's not as hard as cranking your FPS.
Yeah, I think the thing that is being ignored here is just the fact that the hardware is
underpowered and no amount of spin doctoring is going to change, that the Xbox One just
isn't powerful enough, and that these next-gen consoles are either going to be the last ones
ever or they're going to need to be replaced in a much shorter period of time than the
last-gen ones.
So something cool just arrived.
Da da da da da da da da da da!
DDR4!
Although they set the wrong thing, so I'm not quite sure how to react to this.
This is DDR4 2800MHz.
It's a 16GB 4x4 kit of vengence... something.
So basically, that's pretty exciting.
So the pieces are all kind of arriving.
I mean, it's no secret that there are chips out there.
KoolAuler posted screenshots from CPU-Z of Haswell E-chips running on whatever settings
because he's crazy like that.
And yeah, so the hype train has started.
Of not posting screenshots of what just happened.
Yeah, I don't think it's a big deal.
That hype train didn't start.
Um, let me just send off a quick email because that's not what we were supposed to get.
Oh, I just got a troll hangout message from Anthony from NCIX.
He's like, yeah, so you're getting dominators, eh?
Lol.
Because I was supposed to.
I don't know what to do right now.
This is awkward.
You could start a new topic.
I don't really want to.
Do your job.
It's fun hanging out in the awkward zone.
In the awkward zone?
Yeah, this is the awkward zone.
Is that like how your relationships with girls are?
Is it all about the awkward zone?
Nope.
No?
It's all about the like, lasting too long.
Does it get awkward?
That got awkward.
Anyways.
All right, this is cool.
This is really cool.
This is the kind of thing that I think everyone can sort of geek out over, I hope.
So time-lapse video.
Yes, this is cool.
A thing.
A very cool thing.
This is your typical time-lapse video footage.
OK.
Blah, blah, blah.
Some dude or some lady walking around doing things.
OK, so here's a 10x time-lapse.
Super shaky.
Kind of hard to watch.
Now, Microsoft is working on a feature that will be an app-enabled feature.
OK, so here's video stabilization.
Check this out.
Hyperlapse.
Have you not seen this yet?
No.
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
So basically, the way it works is it's creating like a 3D image.
It's creating like a 3D scene from all of the images and then navigating through that.
So we can just watch these.
There's a hyperlapse of that.
So amazing.
I love it.
And then the fact that this isn't going to be, you know, a multi-thousand dollar plug-in
for Adobe Premiere or something like that is incredibly exciting because it enables all
kinds of new creative things that people can do just with basic camera phones.
So the video is kind of blown up.
It's got almost 2 million views.
And so, yeah, I guess that's pretty much all I...
That's awesome.
I had seen this, but I hadn't like I had seen like article titles.
But this week has been so messed up that I had no time to open the article.
So I hadn't actually seen the video yet.
That's pretty epic, actually.
And if you saw the Twitch chat during that, I'll try to zoom up.
Zoom up?
No, not at all.
Just...
Yeah.
Holy sheet.
Oh my God.
Whole lot of that.
Yeah.
So that was kind of awesome.
All right.
So speaking of awesome, Nvidia announces, and this was originally posted on the forum
by Patrick JP something.
Patrick JP 93.
Why is this awesome?
It's not awesome.
OK.
There's some awesome things about it, actually.
And I'm going somewhere with this.
OK.
But Nvidia basically announces that...
What the heck is this?
No, that's not the original poster.
Where's the top of this?
LOL touch screen.
Dang it, touch screen.
Go.
All right.
Originally posted by...
Why am I on the sixth page?
What is going on here?
Artorias.
Thank you.
So Jensen Huang from Nvidia, their CEO, believes that modern graphics cards,
due to their importance for gamers, can continue to increase in ASP.
So ASP is the average sell price.
And Jensen goes on to explain that a number of years ago, gamers were typically willing
to spend around $200 on a GPU with a graphics card and memory attached to it.
And nowadays is closer to they're willing to spend $300.
Now, the reaction to this article has actually been pretty negative,
because I think a lot of people's perception of this
is that Nvidia is planning on jacking up prices.
Whereas that's not actually the way that I read it.
Because we've had...
People are investing more.
Yeah.
We've had higher price options this entire time.
So here, let's go way back in the day.
So I'm going to pick on the X850 XT Platinum Edition.
That's good with a card.
Not that many people remember.
Well, if you were into this stuff at that time, then you'd remember it.
I'm just trolling you.
Way to be a jackass.
I'm just trolling you.
So here we go.
From Tech Report.
Canadian double whack.
So there it is.
That's what it looked like.
Pretty balling.
Check out that copper, though.
I know.
That copper, yo.
All right.
So here's the pricing matrix.
Okay.
So an X850 XT Platinum Edition was a $550 card.
So in terms of how much graphics card prices have increased in the last...
I mean, when was this?
2004.
So that was 10 years ago.
Does 10 years worth of inflation account for...
Let's have a look at AMD's top of the line card today.
And I'm not talking about buying two of them because that was an option back then, too.
So a top of the line R9 290X is...
Here we go.
$549.99.
And look at all just the raw material that's increased since then, too.
Yeah.
I mean, the actual copper is more expensive at this point.
Not to mention how much more complicated it is to manufacture graphics cards.
Now, I'm not just going to pick on AMD here.
Let's go ahead and find something sort of equally, equally kind of over the top for its time.
The 8800 Ultra.
So this was back in 2007.
So we're going to pick on Guru3D's review this time,
where hopefully they have the pricing on the first page.
No, they don't.
So let's go on tech report.
Okay.
Ultra graphics card.
This is what I love about these guys who've been doing it forever.
Scott Lawson, man.
Doing it for a long time.
And their pictures and articles are identical.
I know.
It's that consistent experience, man.
Where is the pricing?
Come on, Scott.
The holder of graphics card performance crown is rarely available for $88.88 at Walmart.
But the Ultra's value proposition is something, something,
and he doesn't actually include the price on the conclusion page.
He says it's like $200 more, but doesn't say what the price is.
Dagnabbit, Scott.
Trying to do a thing here.
All right.
It's blah, blah, blah.
It's blah, blah, blah.
It's blah, blah, blah.
Ah, here we go.
Nvidia expects Ultra prices to start at roughly $829.
This crap isn't new.
So I don't interpret, I don't interpret Nvidia's statement that they expect graphics card average
selling prices to continue to increase as a statement that they plan to increase pricing.
Because if we go and look at the 780 Ti, which is, I'm, I'm excluding the Titan.
Titan is not a gaming card.
If we go and look at the 780 Ti, the highest end actual gaming graphics card from Nvidia now
is priced at $720.
So there you go.
It hasn't really changed a whole lot.
People are just realizing, and this is part of the whole statement,
people are just realizing that, you know, games benefit from these higher end graphics cards.
And you can throw like a not super amazing CPU and a super badass graphics card at the
solution and most games will grab that and run.
And $300 as an average sell price isn't that bad.
I mean, you can get a really great card for $300.
And that's true on both the AMD and the Nvidia side right now.
And yes, some crazy guys are going to run out and buy two Titan Zs for $6,000.
But that doesn't mean that you have to be a part of it.
And just because that product exists doesn't mean that Nvidia ever expects
people to spend $6,000 on the graphics card.
They might not be super amazing at their whole marketing thing.
And they might say it's a gaming card.
But it's not.
And the reality of it is, if you made the product and someone was bananas enough to buy it,
would you not provide an option for them?
I'd be down with that.
I don't know.
Whatever.
I mean, Nvidia within their own product lineup provides better values.
Yes.
You could buy, you could pick up, you could pick up three GTX 780 6 gig cards.
And that would be the extreme gaming option of choice.
If you absolutely had to have the most bananas thing.
And that would cost you just over, that would cost you around $1,700, $1,800 or so.
Less than the price of one Titan Z and would absolutely demolish
at least one in terms of performance.
It would probably beat two, given how much lower a Titan Z is clocked.
So yeah, just because these things exist doesn't mean we have to buy them.
Yeah, exactly.
People are like, I could buy a car.
Yes, you could buy a car, but we're talking about gamers.
Oh, actually, here's an interesting addition from Ghost.
Inflation over the last 10 years has been 26%.
So the fact that AMD's top of the line GPU costs exactly the same as their top of the
line GPU from back then is actually pretty darn impressive and is a reduction in price.
Speaking of AMD, AMD is hoping to put a little bit of Mantle into the next OpenGL sort of
development.
So they've actually provided, I believe they've given the,
yeah, they've given Chronos unfettered access to Mantle.
This was originally posted by Monster Cameron.
And this is news coming from Richard Huddy, AMD's gaming scientist.
We actually had an opportunity to interview him, but interview, interview him.
But it was while I was gone having a baby.
And I knew you were going to be busy, so I kind of bailed on it.
But yeah, that's extremely exciting.
So AMD will impose no restrictions, nor will it charge any licensing fees.
And they're basically just saying, here, this is how we do it.
If you want to take the same approach, go ahead.
So to me, this is basically the nail in the coffin on Mantle, because why would anyone
support Mantle when they can just, if Chronos decides to go ahead and implement some of
Mantle's great features into OpenGL, OpenGL is going to be the way to go, because it's
multi-platform.
I mean, it runs on tablets.
And I seriously don't see Nvidia going, oh, we don't want to use OpenGL.
Like, no, that's no.
Yeah, so I mean, Mantle, it was cool while it lasted.
But and it's just like G-Sync.
You know, it was cool while it lasted.
You know, maybe you sold a couple of graphics cards based on getting a bit better performance
on a Battlefield 4.
But at the end of the day, if the purpose of this was to drive the industry towards
creating this, and if you're going to stop really getting any monetary benefit out of
it at all in the future, then I say, great.
You know, I'm glad that you sold a couple of graphics cards in the meantime.
Or Nvidia, I'm glad you sold a couple monitors in the meantime, because someone had to invest
to make this happen.
And I'm glad someone did it, and I'm glad they got paid.
That's all I have to say.
Right.
That's cool.
Twitter admits that 23 million of its users, of its active users, are automated.
I don't even know if I care, though.
I mean, didn't we assume this?
Yeah, there's so many, and they're pretty cool.
Like, well, OK, Stats Canada isn't a bot, but that's a pretty awesome one.
Is Half-Life 3 out yet?
Which just constantly says no.
There's Big Ben, which goes like, bong, bong, bong, whenever Big Ben would go up.
I don't know, there's a lot of bots.
There's even, like, social experiment bots, and yeah, there's tons of stuff.
I don't know.
I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Not exactly surprising news at all.
But it is kind of cool to see the exact number, or an estimation of the exact number.
Yeah, 8.5% is what they figure of total Twitter users.
OK, that's a lot.
Yeah, kind of.
Oh, this is cool.
The Sony Xperia Z2 lives on after being submerged in salt water for six weeks.
Yeah, so, OK, hold on.
Mango Juice Stain was the OP for that Twitter thing.
Mango.
And then Larves Reviews was the original poster for the Sony Xperia Z2 article that is amazing.
Here, do you want to run through the details of this one?
We have 6400 live viewers right now.
We do.
What the heck?
And I didn't have any time to read the doc this week.
That's absolutely bananas.
It's OK.
Was it an ocean?
That's cool.
I thought they got, like, a bucket of salt water.
Oh, for crying out loud.
I haven't read the doc!
I told you!
I'll cover it.
Did you just throw it in the ocean?
OK, so basically what happened was the way that Sony rates the phone
is for 30 minutes of submersion in fresh water as deep as five feet.
That's it.
That's what the IP rating for the phone says that it can handle.
Now, what happened here was that while water skiing,
Mr. Alexandre Maxin, I guess, from Gothenburg.
OK, I don't know what language that is then.
I was assuming it was French.
It's not.
Was water skiing and left his Sony Xperia Z2 on the seat of the boat.
Once the craft started, the phone fell into the sea and was into the sea bed more than 10 meters
deep.
So for our American viewers, that is 30 feet deep.
Yeah, dog, that is six times the rated depth.
And that's legit like all the gunk that's in the ocean, too.
Six weeks and salt is a corrosion problem.
Six weeks later, a friend of his went scuba diving and retrieved it.
Probably just for lols.
I don't think anyone was expecting it to work, although he did try calling it and
noticed that it didn't go straight to voicemail and therefore assumed it was still on.
But that's not necessarily the case because we've played around with the original Xperia
Z and even under a couple feet of water, wireless reception is not too great.
So it could have been anything causing that.
Anyway, so six weeks later, retrieved it.
The back glass was shattered, but probably from the fall.
And the battery had completely discharged, probably from just sitting there for six weeks.
But the L.E.D. indicator lit up.
And when the phone was plugged in and recharged, it worked perfectly, even making phone calls.
Beast.
That's pretty cool.
Wait, from the fall.
So did it hit like the boat and then fall in the water?
Well, it must remember of a metal object, a metal object falling 30 feet in the water.
If it's somewhat streamlined, that's true.
Can come down pretty good.
Yeah.
So that's probably what happened.
Incredible.
I mean, the Xperia Z was a phone that I really had a hard time recommending because that
T.N. screen was bad.
And on a phone where you might be looking at it from an angle all the time where it's
just like, oh, yeah, you know, whatever, I'm just glancing at it on the table.
That is a big problem.
Whereas the Z2, IPS panel, great specs, great build quality.
What a great phone.
Next up, we have Microsoft possibly renaming Internet Explorer.
Apparently, they've been discussing it for a long time, kicking around names.
So that's not super surprising.
Call it Steve or Bill.
Microsoft Bill.
Yeah, it's just I know what you're referencing with that, but just having like Microsoft
Bill and having the icon just be money would troll so many people because of the Microsoft
logo with the dollar sign is the S.
Or, yeah, just have the Microsoft dollar sign is the S, but name it Bill, because that makes
no sense.
But who cares?
And then make the S like coded in like money texture.
Just be like, so terrible.
You know, I think that I think it's a great idea.
I think they need to do it at some point.
But what I think they need to do is make sure because Internet Explorer is not that bad
right now.
It's not a lot of improvement.
It's been a lot worse at times in its past, but they've got to get it there.
They've got to be because I mean, that was what works so well for Google.
They launched Chrome when Chrome was good.
Chrome has a lot of issues now, but it still has that perception that it's really fast
and really lightweight.
It's not lightweight at all anymore.
No, it's not.
It's heavy as hell.
Like at all.
So what they need to do if they're going to re-imagine Internet Explorer, now's a good
time because everything else is kind of bloated.
Yeah.
And like having a lot of issues and having issues.
So if they were to call it not just in Chrome, Microsoft, something else and create a new
perception of the product, it'll be great if they just take Internet Explorer and reskin
it in a way that is undesirable and crappy and it doesn't stack up well right at the
time of launch, then it's going to be the whole same thing all over again.
Apparently, they briefly considered Ultron, which would have been bad ass.

Let me fire up Ultron.
Go on Reddit.
But lawyers said no.
So those darn lawyers are no fun jerks.
Absolute jerks.
All right, speaking of jerks, anyone who likes micro USB?
Boom.
I said it.
This is posted by Good Bytes on the forum.
The USB type C cable and connectors are finalized and here are renders of what they'll look
like.
So here's what receptacles will look like.
Here's what plugs and cables will look like.
Here is the most important thing about this.
Actually, there's a lot of really important stuff here.
So number one, reversible.
No more putting your head around the back of your computer and trying to figure out
which way it goes in.
Yay.
It looks slimmer, although it's hard for me to say that just based on the picture.
The next cool stuff is it's going to support the new 10 gigabit per second standard.
Is this going to be super thin and fragile, though?
No, I doubt it.
Looking at it, I don't know.
I guess we'll see.
I guess we'll see.
It doesn't look like a locking connector, which is a little bit disappointing.
I wouldn't have minded if there was an optional lock.
There may be an optional lock.
I don't know.
I haven't looked into that much.
But the next cool thing is up to 100 watts of power.
Yes.
That is cool.
So we're going to be talking about...
We've actually kind of seen that a little bit on a slightly different spec, but at CES
I did a video on that.
That was really cool.
So we're going to be talking about being able to run like a multi-hard drive external
enclosure off of this thing.
Or running your monitor.
Yeah, very cool.
Very, very cool.
100 watts is a lot.
Yeah.
One thing that they were trying to do with that 100 watt spec when I was at CES was power
a screen, charge a laptop, and run everything else on it at the same time, because it was
so fast and pushed power.
Pretty cool.
All right, Metal Gear Solid 5 coming to PC.
That's pretty exciting news.
So Konami says, yes, that will happen.
I guess that's pretty much all there is to really say about this.
I think Total Biscuit actually probably put this best.
Yeah.
Because the other big news in terms of, you know, former exclusive titles was Goat Simulator
coming to consoles.
So there you go.
Thank you, Total Biscuit, for summing this up.
So we traded Goat Simulator to consoles for Metal Gear Solid 5 on PC.
Got out like a bandit there, didn't we?
Yes.
Yes.
PC gamers got the better end of that deal.
How horrible Goat Simulator is.
I'm sorry, but God, that game is bad.
And like for being bad, it wasn't even very good at being like funny bad.
It was just kind of bad.
I don't know.
Oh, but we lost a multi-platform game potentially.
Very disappointed about this.
Temporarily.
Temporarily.
Well, yeah.
But yes.
I would have liked to have it sooner.
I finally, mind you, at the rate that I finish games, given that I just played Tomb Raider
2013, this might not affect me at all.
You won't play it until it's released.
Then we'll probably get it for benchmarking anyways, and then they'll just play it today.
So the upcoming Tomb Raider with the reimagined Lara Croft
is going to be an Xbox One exclusive at launch.
Not a ton else to say there.
There's going to be a delay.
I believe they said after holiday season, it might be coming to PC.
I don't remember what the exact time frame is, though.
I don't know where we even are in the dock now.
I guess we can try and find it.
There we go.
The game is coming.
Holiday 2015 exclusively to Xbox.
It is unclear how long the exclusivity will last.
So now we know it's at least coming.
We're just not really sure when, which is kind of unfortunate.
Apparently DayZ is going to PS4.
I know Rocket 2 Guns or whatever.
I think that's what he refers to himself as.
Rocket 2 Guns in the past.
Posted by Jamdude.
Posted by Jamdude.
Yeah, Rocket 2 Guns or Dean Hall.
In the past, it's kind of mashed consoles a little bit.
Not a ton, but a little bit.
There's a tweet here if you jump back real quick.
Excuse me.
Sorry, I'm tired.
It's been a long week.
I was just gonna say, I think we're both pretty tired this week.
Yeah, no.
I see the one.
So some guy says PS4 next release, please.
Sorry, different wording, but yeah.
And then another guy, unnamed guy, says,
it hasn't even been fully released on a glorious PC.
What are you expecting, peasant?
And then Dean Hall, also known as Rocket 2 Guns, responds,
yes, quiet consoles.
The menfolk are talking.
So he has bashed consoles a little bit in the past,
but then has claimed on Reddit, I believe it was,
that getting it on the consoles might help funding to get other things.
So essentially, stuff like DirectX 11 and 64-bit support.
So apparently they used a little bit of the PC funding
to get their PlayStation agreement thing going on.
So that's kind of sketchy, but that's what happens
when you pre-order early release games.
Yeah, we really need to make that shirt,
but the early designs for it are terrible.
Did you see them?
No.
I paid full price for this.
I didn't see it.
Yeah, no, it's terrible.
Okay, so the creator of pop-up ads is Sorry.
This was originally posted on the forum by Victorious Secret.
It's actually kind of a funny little thing.
Okay, thank you.
Continue, thank you.
Warning, annoying pop-up.
Ethan Zuckerman is sorry.
He leads the Center for Civic Media at MIT,
says he didn't realize what he was bringing into the world
when he wrote the code for the first pop-up ad
more than 20 years ago.
Oh, God.
Tells the story of how it happened in an exquisite essay
about how the ad-based business model came to dominate
the internet and why it really shouldn't
and what we ought to do about it.
But basically what happened was they were in the middle
of working on something and what happened was
there was an inappropriate ad that was encouraging anal sex
or something like that on a car manufacturer's website
and they went, whoa, hold on a second.
Like, you know, ads are good,
but we don't want to be associated with this.
So the idea was if it was a pop-up,
it wouldn't be associated with the website
and it wouldn't actually have to be on the website.
It would be separate.
So it would allow advertisers and content hosts
to dissociate each other from each other.
So that was the intention.
Yeah, and he just says, I'm sorry, our intentions were good.
Sorry, man, but I don't know.
You didn't see that going anywhere bad.
Well, okay.
You think about the way that you might sort of
clutch something just as a temporary fix.
I guess you really think about the long-term implications.
Someone was probably able to Jack that code.
So he probably was like, I'm making this for me.
And someone was like, I'm taking this for me.
It is mine now.
And then that was bad.
Yeah, super, super, super bad.
Okay.
I just got to do a quick search for a hashtag here
because we have a Squarespace subscription to give away today.
All right.
So I'm searching for a hashtag Linus Squarespace
and I think we might have a winner.
Oh, okay.
Is this the thing?
I don't know.
It's a trial website.
There we go.
Okay.
So I had to enter like some login thing.
So tech prints, the tech prints.squarespace.com.
You just won because your website right here.
Hold on a second.
There you go.
Your website right here that you created with Squarespace
is now yours for free for a year.
So this is the beauty of Squarespace.
Even people who don't know a whole lot about creating websites
can make a, you know, kind of flashy effects.
This one scrolls faster than the other thing.
Nice looking website with functional navigation.
There you go.
You just go ahead and check that out.
Look, he has a diamond because he's a prince.
Well, okay, whatever.
Is Linus Tech Tips any less stupid than the tech prints?
Really?
No.
No.
What's our company name?
So guys, just as a reminder, create yourself a trial Squarespace account.
Use hashtag Linus Squarespace and every month we give away a Squarespace account on the WAN Show.
So if you don't know what Squarespace is, guys,
it is the easy, scalable, affordable way to create your own beautiful website.
No offense to the tech prints, but I don't think he's exactly a web design guru.
But Squarespace allows pretty much anyone with simple tools to design a logo,
to design a website, to create their navigation,
and to have it up on the web hosted by Squarespace for you.
And if you pay for an entire year, by the way, you can save 10% with our offer code.
If you pay for an entire year at a time, they'll even throw in the first year of your domain name.
So they do all the hosting, they handle everything, and it's just there and it just works.
We've even tried to crash our own Squarespace site, linusmediagroup.com,
and we've never successfully been able to do it.
Although we have more viewers than ever before on the WAN Show.
Should we try to take it down?
Let's see if we can take it down.
And that's not even as many as we have.
We're over 6,500.
We're over 6,500.
Okay, so guys, it's linusmediagroup.com.
So we're gonna stress test Squarespace here.
Guys, hit it, hit it.
Hit linusmediagroup.com with everything you got.
Drink all your rage-o-hall.
Yeah, exactly.
So let's see, I'm just gonna keep refreshing here.
And I'm gonna see if it can handle it.
Oh, it slowed down a little bit that time.
So guys, Squarespace allows you to create a website for your blog, for your portfolio.
It even has integrated e-commerce tools so you can have a store that you run out of Squarespace.
So it can be something as simple as you create a PayPal merchant account.
I'm gonna do another refresh here.
Create a PayPal merchant account, set up a Squarespace store, and boom,
you can sell whatever widgets your niece makes or something online
or whatever it is you want to do.
It's really cool, it's flexible, it's easy to use.
And if you want to, you can dig a little deeper
and you can get access to much more customization
if you happen to be a more experienced web guy.
So check that out.
We did not manage to take it down.
I was really thinking that might have been enough.
I thought we might get it this time.
Geez.
But there you go, guys.
And that's the most basic Squarespace plan.
And the great thing about it is it's scalable on its own.
So if all of a sudden you need a lot more bandwidth,
all you have to do is be like, okay, no, upgrade me.
I need more capabilities, throw more power at me.
I wish they would let us host Linus Media Group out of their centers.
You mean linustechtips.com?
Yeah, I know, right?
They're like bulletproof.
Yeah, that would be great.
That would be awesome, guys.
So there you go, guys.
Let us rack our server in there.
Squarespace lets you create your own beautiful...
Okay, in summary, Squarespace lets you create your own beautiful website
that is going to have the reliability you need without the hassle and headache
that comes along with maintaining 99% uptime,
which is the standard on a website when you're trying to do it on your own.
So thanks, Squarespace, for sponsoring the WAN Show today.
And as always, guys, don't forget, use offer code LINUS
if you sign up for Squarespace so that you can save 10% on your first order.
And then you can also have a free trial website for two weeks.
And stay tuned for next month, I guess,
when we do our next Squarespace site giveaway.
I think that's pretty much it.
People keep saying it's down, and then I test it, and it's totally not.
It's totally not, guys.
Here, okay, okay, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
Not down at all.
Rekt.
There we go.
All right, so let's go ahead and move on.
I think we have like one more topic today.
Oh, oh, this one.
This is good news and like terrible news at the same time.
Intel teams up with 50 Cent, well, 50 Cent's company, SMS Audio, on biometric earbuds.
So the technology is cool.
Basically, it's a biometric monitoring gadget,
so it's going to check your heart rate, temperature, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I actually don't remember exactly what it monitors.
I don't much care because I personally think that an earphone
is a phenomenally stupid place to wear that.
I mean, the article says something about,
it seems like one of the obstacles for wearables
is that people are not looking for a new thing to wear.
But the problem is that nobody lives with their earbuds in the whole time, so...
Well, if it's for working out.
If it's just for working out, then okay, but that doesn't actually give you
that much useful information about your overall lifestyle.
Yes, this is true.
So who gives a crap?
You might as well just suck it up and wear an armband then.
So, okay, anyway, basically the price point will be acceptable to consumers, says SMS Audio.
Says SMS Audio.
So what does that mean?
Two hundred dollars.
And they sound like poo-poo.
Yeah, they say the thing, the thing that drives me crazy about this
is it's an article about earphones that makes no mention of how they sound.
They're earphones.
If I wanted a monitor thing that I wear in my ear, then that's what I would look for.
Why would I want earphones that sound bad?
And I'm assuming they're going to sound bad.
Although I would be willing to completely reverse my sort of, you know, analysis here
if I do try them out and they're great, like I'm not going to be close-minded about it,
but I just don't expect them to sound good at all.
I mean, if you saw our review of the Streets by 50 On Ears, yeah, that was just bad.
I wonder how much the Star Wars edition in-ear biometric ones are going to cost.
I really wish we'd stopped giving this kind of nonsense our attention.
We shouldn't have even talked about it.
We should have just completely ignored it.
But if we...
The biometric thing is cool, though.
Yeah.
Oh, you mean like on the show?
Yeah.
I was going to say the review was good because we smashed it,
so that means that other people can tell people it was bad.
I don't think we were...
We have to inform the informants.
The problem with us doing a review of something like Streets by 50,
I mean, that was a one-time thing, I think, where I was just like, oh, this is Star Wars,
which is cool, but it's also an obviously terrible pair of headphones and it's expensive,
which is hilarious.
I bought them intending to slam them because I knew they were going to be bad.
I did do my due diligence.
I made sure they were bad before I slammed them, but I bought them intending to do that.
I'm not going to make a habit of just buying stuff to be terrible.
We do, though.
Not very often.
Not often at all.
Once every quarter or every six months or something like that.
So I'm not going to run out and buy these just so that I can declare them to be horrible.
And I guess I just don't really know what to say about it anymore.
The only biometrically scanning kind of thingy that I've seen in a long time that I cared about
was that thing that I mentioned to you where it was the...
I believe it was a wristband, but who really cares?
And it's constantly measuring and it measures the salt and stuff in your skin to figure out,
do you need to drink more water?
Do you need to eat more food?
Do you need to work out more?
Do you need to start moving because you've been too idle?
That one's kind of interesting because every once in a while it'll be like,
hey, you haven't had any water today.
Go drink some.
Or you're malnourished right now.
Go eat something.
Yeah, that to me is a lot more useful,
whereas something like Inears that you're going to be wearing maybe an hour a day,
that's not going to give any kind of useful information.
It's just marketing to gullible people based on that whole fad of fitness level monitoring.
That's all, it's another Wii Fit.
Yeah.
That's what it is.
Fitness stuff will always sell.
Yeah, I know.
I just...
And okay, I've got a lot of people saying that yes,
reviews like the Star Wars edition Streets by 50 On Ears are important,
but I don't actually agree because you guys already know.
You watch this show.
So who are we reaching?
We're not reaching the people who are buying this stuff
and leaving rave reviews on Amazon about how great they are.
I don't know.
You have to also calculate in that we're getting new viewers all the time,
so they may not actually know.
And if one of their friends is fairly dead set on buying it and they try to tell them it's bad
and they're like, oh no, I don't know.
I've heard it's pretty good.
They could show them the video.
My name's not going to carry a ton of weight with that person
because they've never heard of me.
It's a fairly well shot video, so it seems fairly legit.
There's quite a few views on it.
And then they'll go and then they'll go look at five star customer reviews on Amazon.
Doesn't matter.
Some of the other Amazon.com has 75 averaging four and a half stars.
This is Amazon.ca I'm on right now.
So that's what we're up against.
We're up against people who don't know any better
and buy whatever fitty tells them to and like it.
And it's just wow, wow.
In my opinion, SMS is better and wouldn't mind recommending it to my friends.
I mean, we're talking verified purchases.
Better than what?
Beats?
Better than, I don't know, airplane headphones probably.
The issue is that people don't...
These sound so purchased.
SMS audio is the best way to listen to music.
That doesn't even mention...
These headphones are made of superb quality build and sound.
They're more durable than beats and they sound better and clearer.
That sounds incredibly purchased.
Just saying.
Oh, but the, but like the grammar's wrong.
So it probably is an end user.
I wouldn't know that that's happened in purchase ones a lot.
Yeah, I guess you're probably like a ton.
Mainly you see the grammar problem and spelling problem thing.
People are like Linus audio is subjective, man.
No, it isn't.
There's bad audio.
Bad audio is bad audio.
And streets by 50 are objectively bad.
They do not take the signal that comes into them and output something that resembles it.
That's bad.
I think there's, there's a, there's a...
There is some subjectivities, but bad is bad.
But there's, yeah, there's still a, there's still a threshold of this is,
this is just bad and these ones are good and these ones are subjective.
Look, it's like wine.
There's lots of different good wine and they can be different from each other.
But bad wine is going to make anybody throw up.
As if they've tried good wine, especially.
That's all there is to it.
Done.
I really hoped everyone who watched this show knew better, but apparently they don't.
Sorry.
Anyway, I think on that sort of annoying note, we're done here.
Peace out, guys.
We'll see you again next week.
Thank you for watching.
And the archive will be up if you tuned in late, hopefully sometime tonight.
Destroyed.
And thanks again for watching.
As long as YouTube allows me to upload it, it will be up sometime tonight.
There you go.
Oh yeah.
Squarespace sponsored the show today.
Thanks Squarespace.
Thanks Squarespace.