Welcome to the WAN Show!
Had a great CES this year.
Saw a lot of cool stuff. I'm back.
I flew back. I was supposed to be
back at midnight, instead I was back at
2.30 in the morning.
So I, um,
pretty tired, but, had a great show.
Ready to talk to you guys about all the cool stuff we saw.
Also,
wow, what is this?
Ah, crap. There was a topic
that I wanted to do. Oh, yes.
OpenAI rejects
the New York Times lawsuit
that we talked about last week.
Says that copyrighted material
is necessary to LLMs,
therefore, we had to use it.
Yeah, that's gonna be our headline topic today.
We'll have a little bit of discussion about that.
What else we got, Luke? Video games are no longer
the biggest entertainment medium
in Britain.
Really? Womp womp
for all of us, really.
To be completely honest, so.
Yep. Also, Valve
cracks down on fan projects.
Those are what you picked.
What else, what else would I pick? I wouldn't have guessed.
I was thinking maybe the... Oh, the eBay one's
bizarre. What even is that one?
Oh, it's bizarre. Like, eBay,
eBay people, like, harassed
people, like, mailed them animals
and stuff, because, yeah, no, it's a whole thing.
Well, yeah, well, they settled, like, it's a thing.
Whoa. Yeah, we'll talk about that. They settled.
Okay, we gotta talk about that.
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Oh, well, your face. Sorry.
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Dan, Dan got some too, but, um,
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Yeah, we'll do this. We'll do this.
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We'll do this. We'll do this.
We'll do this. We'll do this.
You don't get to check out my face.
Yeah, we'll do this. We'll do the sponsor.
We'll do the sponsor read later, and then we'll give him his.
Why don't we jump right into our first topic today,
which is OpenAI's defense against the New York Times lawsuit.
They publicly called the copyright claim against them
meritless and disappointing.
Yes.
According to OpenAI,
the only way the Times could have gotten ChatGPT
to produce verbatim sections of their copyrighted text
that it was trained on
would have been by manipulating the prompts
with the specific intent to get that kind of result.
What meanies?
Yeah.
What mean people?
OpenAI has also recently stated
that it would be impossible to create a useful LLM
without some amount of copyrighted material
because most forms of human expression
are either copyrighted or extremely old.
So your honor-
Therefore, meritless.
And also disappointing.
I didn't do anything wrong because-
I had to do it.
I had to do it.
Yeah.
If I hadn't done it,
otherwise how would I have built this business
and made all this money?
If I didn't steal the plutonium,
I couldn't have made the bomb.
Right!
So now, we've got the bomb!
And what?
You want me to apologize for taking the plutonium?
That's meritless.
I mean-
I'm sorry.
I kind of-
I kind of-
Okay, I set this up as the headline topic
and I made it like the title of the stream and everything
because I was kind of thinking
we'd be able to riff on this for a while,
but it really does seem kind of open and shut, doesn't it?
Your Honor,
you know, given that the desired result
was for him to be dead,
I'm afraid there was simply no way to do that
without killing him.
Therefore, this murder trial is both meritless
and, if I could speak frankly,
disappointing.
And we know-
Guys, we know that them saying meritless and disappointing
were at different points in time, whatever.
We're-
Yes, it doesn't matter.
Clearly laughing about it.
The point is that OpenAI
clearly has no actual defense whatsoever,
or, or, this is Sam Altman playing 5D chess,
coming up with the worst possible argument that he can up front,
so that the New York Times lawyers will go,
alright, well, why don't we knock off for-
Take it easy.
Yeah, why don't we knock off for a six month lunch,
and we're just gonna cruise into the courtroom,
say, yo, your honor, they're the bad guys,
and everything will be fine, and we're gonna win this thing.
Like, maybe they have some kind of-
some kind of ace up their butt crack,
that is incredible.
It's like the ace of-
Nuggets?
I was like, where is he-
Where is he possibly going with this one?
Well, there's certainly no diamonds there,
I'll tell you that for sure.
Oh, man.
Oh, boy.
They should probably-
They should probably use ChatGPT to come up with a better defense.
Oh.
Oh, no.
That would be really interesting.
Man.
I love that.
I'm trying to think of like-
Ugh.
Like, I know-
Okay, I-
I-
Like, you can't possibly charge me with corporate espionage.
I mean, if I didn't take the current stuff-
Everything else is-
Everything that's-
That's not currently under NDA is old.
Like, I-
I-
Come on!
I'm gonna ask ChatGPT what its legal defense is in this situation and see what it says.
Okay, I'm very excited for this.
It's gonna take me a sec.
Uh, in the meantime, hey guys, it's really good to be back.
We're gonna be talking about a lot of AI stuff that we saw down at CES.
We actually only did a handful of LTTs.
We did some of those sponsored ones before the show.
Um, we've got a couple of ones that I'm really, really happy with.
The one from the Intel booth today, if you haven't watched it, go watch it.
It's awesome.
Uh, talks a little bit about Thunderbolt 5.
Um, a little bit about this cool new feature called Thunderbolt Share.
Uh, the title for that video is 100% not clickbait.
Um, that whole room was under NDA until I went in, checked it out and I was like, please,
can we talk about this?
And there was a process and they pretty much got the business unit head in the room with
me a couple days later and I kind of made my case.
I kind of went, look, I have this idea in my head for a piece that I want to do on connectivity.
Uh, because frankly, what am I supposed to do?
Talk about Meteor Lake?
So let's talk about moving data around really fast, which is something that Intel is really
flipping good at.
What I want to talk about is Thunderbolt 5.
I want to talk about Wi-Fi 7, which is it anyone else?
Is anyone else's jaw on the floor over how Wi-Fi 7 snuck up on us?
Wi-Fi in general seems to be moving very fast.
Wi-Fi 7 came out of, it feels like absolutely nowhere.
My first real like, oh, I am very interested in this technology happened when I was on set
holding a Wi-Fi 7 access point and a Wi-Fi 7 device, watching them transfer speeds at speeds
in excess of two, three gigabit per second.
I'm sitting here going, are you freaking kidding me?
A Wi-Fi upgrade that actually upholds the promises it makes about next gen performance?
This is incredible.
So I made my case, look, I want to talk about moving data around really fast, and I feel
like Thunderbolt share is really critical, but I need you guys to answer some deeper questions.
Because the first time I was in there, even when I wasn't going to be making a video about
it yet, I was like, OK, but how?
What's the data path?
And they're like, we can't tell you any of that.
I still had to do a little bit of educated guesswork, so it's early days.
All of the software is in alpha, it's super cool, go watch the video.
But the other really big one that I'm super proud of is we did a video on kind of the evolving
situation around connectors on the back motherboard.
So Asus, BTF, MSI, Project Stealth, I think they call it, and then Gigabyte Project Zero.
No, Project Zero.
I can't remember.
I think Gigabyte's Project Stealth, MSI's Project Zero.
And then there's now an ecosystem that's developing for these products.
Corsair has two cases that natively support these rear connector motherboards.
And we kind of fleshed it out into a full LTT by tearing down the demo PC in Corsair's booth
and then rebuilding it as the video.
Kind of talking about, there's one key thing I missed, and I feel stupid for not mentioning
it in the video now, but how there will be some challenges moving this to 100% adoption
no matter how good it is, no matter how many industry partners support it.
And that's that it adds a bunch of clearance on the back of the motherboard, especially
with stiff connectors like front USB 3, especially front USB 3 Type-C, that just isn't there
on budget cases that want to be as narrow as possible in order to save on materials.
So that's something I didn't cover.
But other than that, it's pretty thorough.
That one's going to be really good.
And then the other kind of big production that I did on the floor, like not a short circuit,
like a full LTT, was a roundup of, I think we ended up hitting about 10 AI booths.
And I'm talking AI duct taped to a bicycle, AI duct taped to a computer mouse.
Like what's AI integrated into a monitor?
What would an AI monitor be, Luke?
I challenge you to tell me, because he wasn't at the show this year.
No.
So this is all going to be fresh for him, because it's not like he pays attention to tech news
or anything.
Not really.
He's got the WAN show for that.
Yeah.
I saw the rabbit.
And I do want to talk about that.
Yes, we'll definitely talk about the rabbit.
But it, I don't know.
Like picture quality profile settings changing dynamically with content?
Yeah, I know.
You're not even close.
So, we'll talk about that in a bit.
Alright.
In the meantime, I've stalled long enough.
Luke, what did ChatGPT suggest for OpenAI's defense?
It suggested six different approaches.
Wow!
Something that I think is actually quite interesting is that one of them actually somewhat lines
up with what happened.
Which is public interest.
Argue that the development of AI has significant public interest benefits, like advancing technology,
education, and research, which might be considered in the context of fair use.
Wow!
Okay, what else has it got?
Well, it also says fair use doctrine in general, transformative use, minimal use, public interest,
no direct copying, and precedent and legal ambiguity.
No direct copying says emphasize that the AI model doesn't store or reproduce verbatim copies
of the text, but generates new original content based on the patterns learned during training.
Okay, so there's some more plausible defenses in there.
Yeah.
Other than, sorry your honor, we had to do it, otherwise how would we have achieved our goal?
Yeah, what do you even mean?
Yeah, I mean, some of them are basically that with extra steps, but...
I think they more or less all are.
But it is what it is.
Alright, well, yeah, good luck, good luck with that you guys.
What do you want to do next?
Um, let's see here.
Okay, it is going.
Good.
What other main ones are we at?
Do you want to just jump into CES?
I'd love to.
Yeah, let's just do it.
Yeah, let's jump right into CES.
Okay, we'll talk about AI things.
Let's talk about the Rabbit R1.
Yeah.
This ended up being a surprise hit.
And I've got to say, I am still surprised.
Their video has 3.7 million views up in here.
What?
No, stop.
I don't...
What are you...
Stop, not right now.
Comments turned off.
3-day-old video, 7.4 thousand subscribers.
Yeah.
3.7 million views.
3.7 million views.
This launched as a...
It was as a Kickstarter, is that right?
Or as some kind of crowd-funded device?
I can't remember.
No, I don't think it did.
I don't think so.
No, it didn't.
I think it just launched for sale.
Basically, it's a $200 palm-sized device co-designed with Teenage Engineering that sold out its first batch of 10,000 units in just 24 hours and the second batch sold out a day later.
And I would forgive you for asking, I'm sorry, what is it exactly?
It is part of, this is from our notes, an emerging class of devices that are essentially dedicated hardware for AI assistants.
So the first example that we've talked about on the show of this, which is the Humane AI pin, is $700 and seems to be not especially functional.
So that's the one that has the little projector so that you can see a sort of virtual screen on your palm.
I mean, we don't know.
Yeah.
Does anyone have one yet?
The Humane pin?
Yeah.
Not that I'm aware of.
I don't think so, right?
Yeah.
There's another one called the Tab that I have to confess I have never heard of and I wouldn't have clicked on this headline.
That is a stupid headline.
To replace God?
Superpower Tamagotchi, also what is up with these ads?
I can't even see anything.
Cool.
Anywho, thanks Fast Company.
And then of course there's the Rabbit.
So the R1 runs Rabbit OS and doesn't have apps.
Instead, it's large action model, so kind of like large language model, in this case it's a model of actions, uses computer applications like a human does.
So the product demo showcases common use cases, like ordering food, but in theory, you can manually train it to do any task by explaining what you're doing as you record your computer screen.
That's actually pretty interesting.
So theoretically, if you show it how to buy Tide Pods because you're a hungry millennial, then it would be able to open a web browser, navigate to, you know, Amazon or whatever website is good to get.
Oh, everyone's pointing out, you saw ads.
I don't know what they were for.
That's pretty good.
I know something was in my way.
And I think you only saw them because you literally, yeah, you literally could not see the thing you needed to see.
If you gave me, if you told me I could have a million dollars if I could tell you what those ads were for, I would have to give up the million dollars.
I have absolutely no idea.
That's pretty good.
Okay.
I do occasionally see them, but in this case, honestly, I don't know what they were for.
You couldn't see the content.
Yeah, I have no idea.
Yeah.
Okay, what are we supposed to be talking about right now?
Right, right, right.
You could show it how to kind of navigate through the cart and through the checkout process and place an order for you, which raises some concerns for me.
I mean, giving a device sort of that will hopefully do exactly what I want it to do.
This kind of access to logged in applications and services to take actions on my behalf definitely gives me a little bit of unease.
But assuming that it actually works as well as it should, I mean, it's basically auto hotkey, but with AI, if you kind of think about it, which raises a question like, oh, why not just make this an app?
Founder Jesse Liu explains that, A, because you get more clout this way.
It's true.
And B, because opening a phone app to make it do things on other apps that you have installed seems kind of awkward.
Riley says, hey, Riley added something to the dog.
Riley does help with the dog.
I just mean he's got a little commentary thing here.
I appreciate the vision of a device that changes what it looks like to do computer phone stuff.
Instead of hunching over a screen, tapping little buttons while ignoring people around you.
You just tell your little Tamagotchi pokey decks to do something and it does it.
It totally could have been an app.
But maybe it shouldn't be an app, says Riley, and you can't deny the cool design.
The last line from Riley is a huge part of it for me.
Teenage engineering was a part of this.
Therefore, this killed.
I think that's where a lot of this lands.
It looks really cool.
It looks super cool.
And I think in an era of the most boring rectangles we've ever had with as much touch screen things as possible.
Having physical stuff.
Push to talk mic.
Flip the camera around thingy.
Physical device.
It's an actual thing that I can have.
I think a lot of people are gravitating towards that.
dbrand apparently has a skin coming.
Because of course they do.
On that note, another example of that that was from our AI roundup video that I walked into thinking was stupid and walked out of very close to wanting one was this AI voice recorder.
So what it does is it just transcribes voice to text and then at the end it, or then it transfers, sorry, first it records audio, then it transfers the audio to your phone, it transcribes it voice to text style, then it creates like an index of the main topics, whether it was a meeting or a phone call or a job interview or whatever it was, and stores it.
Which is like, okay, don't you have Otter?
Or some other, some other, you know, large language model assisted voice recognition and transcription software for your phone, don't you, isn't there an app for that?
But bear with me here.
I kind of went, okay, why does this need to exist?
And they said, well, a number of reasons.
First of all, the iPhone does not support call recording.
Why call recording is not supported on the iPhone is, I don't know, because f*** you, I guess, you know, Apple things or something.
I don't know.
But it's not.
And one of the modes that it operates in is specifically designed to tune the microphones for recording calls.
So having it sitting on the back of your phone, it goes on with Megsafe.
Having it sitting on the back of your phone means you can be on a call, you just hold a button until it buzzes, you are now recording the call.
So in many places, so to those of you freaking out about this, in many places, it is legal with single party consent.
So just your own consent to record a call, including here.
And there have been, I gotta say, numerous times in my life, when having a recording of a phone conversation would have been extremely helpful.
Either because the other party didn't remember, because the other party misrepresented it, or because I didn't remember what took place on the call and what everyone had agreed to.
It would have been great to be able to go back in time and go, okay, what did actually, what did actually happen?
Where did this miscommunication happen?
Absolutely.
I'm sure we've all been in that spot before.
You hold it for longer, it buzzes twice, and the call recording ends.
It'll do, I think it was 30 hours, it's rated, so who knows, but it's rated for 30 hours of continuous recording, and it's like this thin.
It's like, it's crazy thin, it just kind of sits on the back of your phone, and you can put it in like a little wallet sleeve.
Does it like share power with the phone or something?
No, no, no, it just has a little tiny, little tiny battery in it, and it uses pogo pins to charge, just with a standard USB connector.
And then there was, yeah, and I kind of came away from it going, yeah, so now I have the ability to not drain my phone's battery with an additional app.
I don't have to fumble with an app on my phone, I can record calls on a phone that doesn't out of the box support call recording, and if my phone is dead outright, I can still record stuff, copy the audio files onto my computer, or sync them with my phone later, and I've got it.
I can still record a meeting, or whatever the case may be.
And you know what, it's the kind of thing where not everyone's going to need that, but people who do need it, just having it, that's freaking awesome!
So yeah, I walked in going, well this is silly, this could just be an app, and I walked out going, yeah, the app is like the, that's like the crappy version of this.
You know?
And those guys, that's where, that's where I got my wires crossed, those guys just raised like millions of dollars on Kickstarter.
So that, yeah, that's, that's where I got this.
It's interesting, so we're all going to external devices.
I know, right?
What the heck?
Everything was going into the phone.
And now we're bringing back the talk boy.
2024 is the start of things coming out of the phone?
I mean, I guess, I think most people are still going to use the consolidated device, but I mean, do you know how many people I saw walking around the show with point and click cameras?
Really?
Yeah!
And I don't even necessarily mean obvious media, you know, who are holding a little mirrorless or something, you know, and a shotgun mic with a dead cat on it or whatever.
I'm talking people just, you know, taking pictures.
It's actually very nice not being on your phone all the time, even if you're doing things that you would normally do with your phone.
A hundred percent!
Because like, you're taking pictures, you're sitting there, but notifications are popping in, whatever else is happening.
You're draining your phone's battery, you're doing all this kind of stuff.
It's like, ugh.
I definitely have some concerns about privacy with devices like this.
The, uh, the recorder is powered by ChatGPT.
Ah, cool.
So...
Yep.
Hopefully, if you're using one of these, you don't work at a three-letter agency, but...
That's honestly, that's a big thing with, um, I mean, it's been a big thing with LLMs this whole time, but with both the Rabbit and this, uh, and I mean, theoretically, the AI pin and the tab or whatever as well, but...
Like, okay, so I can record actions, uh, what if I start doing my timesheet with Rabbit?
Yeah.
That's some external device accessing company documentation and inputting something that's like a legal process to a certain degree.
That affects compensation.
Yeah.
That is like, directly...
It's actually a huge deal.
Money.
Yeah.
Because you would totally do that.
Look, look, look on his face.
100%.
He's not even gonna pretend to deny it.
But on the security side, it's like, actually too big of a deal.
I would love to do that.
Yeah.
But like, I...
No.
No.
It's like, there's a lot of different Chrome extensions that can help you with, like, email, that can help you with all this other kind of stuff, and then you look through what you have to share with the Chrome extension, and it's like...
It's a little scary.
Maybe I better just learn to type faster.
Maybe no.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think a big one that we should talk about is the bike with ChatGPT.
Did you see that headline as well?
No.
What?
That was the product that inspired the sort of roundup of silly AI integrated products at CES.
And believe it or not, when I walked out of the booth, I wanted one.
Not because I would actually use it.
I'm not actually gonna buy one.
You getting sold on things at CES that aren't monitors or computers is actually weird.
I got sold on this thing hard.
It's a bike.
Well, it's an e-bike.
Okay.
With 200 kilometer range.
Wow.
Yeah.
So this thing, you could, like, commute from the burbs on it.
Yeah.
Like, incredible range.
Huh.
And it's not just a bike with ChatGPT bolted to it.
It's a bike with an API that can interface with other products that have APIs.
And it's not some, like, vaporware nonsense thing.
This is their second generation.
And the product fundamentally already exists and is already being used in useful ways.
So, actually, speaking of ways, one of the integrations that they have is with, I forget
what it's called, but this mapping software that's really popular in Europe for cyclists.
Okay.
Because, apparently, Google Maps for cycling is just trash in Europe.
And there's this other one that everyone uses or something like that.
And so, Buddy at the booth basically goes, yeah.
So, right now, we support ChatGPT 3.5, I think is what they're on right now.
So, you basically just press, you hold this button, and you say, I am, I'm in city.
Is this it?
No.
Oh.
Wait, yes?
That looks a lot like the display.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Yeah.
Okay.
But, no, the models were different.
That's why I got confused.
Oh.
Because the models are not cord.
They're something else.
Okay.
I'll keep trying.
Yeah, so they're new products.
But, yeah, yeah, that's the company, though.
And so, basically, the demo is, okay, ChatGPT, I'm looking for somewhere to eat.
Plot a course to here.
And through the API access to ChatGPT, it can handle the language interpretation and voice-to-text.
And then through the API integration with this mapping app, it can set a course.
And through API integration with Apple Health, it can monitor your heart rate off of your
Apple Watch and dynamically adjust the motors to help maintain your flipping heart rate as
you're going up and down random terrain.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
So you could, like, stay zone two the whole time?
And I'm sitting there.
That's actually sick.
I get this thing going.
So this is basically, it has all the, right?
It has all the control of a stupid stationary Peloton stupid thing in your living room.
But all the actually being f***ing outside of a bicycle.
And productive if you're commuting somewhere, going to get groceries or whatever else, you're
like actually doing something.
And all the range of a freaking, you know, moped.
This is something I've been interested in with all of these devices.
But someone in Philippine Chat, Dofo, just said, imagine how it'll hallucinate.
Sorry, I can't do that, Dave.
His heart rate is really low.
Make it work!
So, yeah.
What's cool about it is just that it has an onboard.
Essentially, it's a smart bike.
You know, two years ago, it would have been called Smart Bike.
Smart Bike, yeah.
And three or four years ago, it would have been called 5G Bike of the Future.
I do wonder, like...
And seven years ago, eight years ago, it would have been called IoT Bike.
Yeah.
So, to an extent, it's just a new name for fundamentally the same idea, which is global connectivity,
right, between all of our devices and the services that we use.
But the AI, the ChatGPT element of it, is kind of what ties it together.
Because, realistically, biking is not exactly a hands-free use case.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, being able to use my voice, kind of important.
So, that's what I was going to kind of ask.
Yeah.
I've been wondering how a lot of these devices are going to beat the hallucinations.
And I'm kind of wondering if this one might be beating it by actually limiting how much the ChatGPT side of this is actually even doing.
Because, like, if it's changing how much the motor is helping you based on your heart rate, ChatGPT doesn't even need to be involved with that at all.
No.
It wouldn't be.
At no point.
That's a completely separate API integration thing.
Probably all it's doing is using its voice input, if anything.
Like, a lot of the different things.
It's not Waze.
It's some other one.
Whatever it is.
Yeah.
Whatever mapping integration they have, it's very likely it's not even using ChatGPT to do anything with that.
So, what is it actually using ChatGPT for?
For voice to text, essentially.
That's it.
Yeah.
As far as I can tell, you can also just, like, ask it questions and interact with it if you want to.
Right.
Like, you can cycle through different.
So you could use, like, standard.
Yep.
And, I mean, people are raising all kinds of great questions.
Okay.
Right, Linus.
But what happens when they brick this thing?
Then you have an e-bike with 200 kilometer range.
Hopefully.
I mean, yeah.
Or hopefully they open it up or, you know, something.
And, like, Linus, would you really want, you know, some network to have your freaking heart rate and where you are and all the food you ate?
No.
No.
But a lot of people won't care.
Yeah.
And for them, cool bike, bro.
You're already giving a lot of that information in a lot of these situations.
Which doesn't make it right.
No.
Doesn't make it good.
But...
Ah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it makes it...
It.
Kind of is what it is.
Um.
Got another question here from someone in Floatplane Chat.
Eni Ra.
Speaking of things Linus was sold on getting that doesn't include a monitor.
Uh...
Or...
Whatever...
Oh.
That doesn't...
Okay.
Nope.
I'm not sure where you're going with that.
I thought you were asking about the monitor.
So we uploaded the short circuit of the product that I was talking about that gave me a bigger gaming advantage
Yeah.
Than anything I've probably touched in the last 10 or 15 years.
Yeah.
What's that?
Um.
It's the 360 Hertz OLED gaming monitor.
Now look.
I...
What game were you playing?
Halo Infinite.
You got it at 360 FPS?
Um...
Not quite 360 but really high.
Okay.
And you don't...
It's not necessarily about that.
It's...
It's about the motion clarity of this display.
I have talked in the past about the...
About the limited rate of return as you go from...
Or the...
The...
The...
Reduced return going from 60 to 120.
Then from 120 to 240.
Then from 240 to 360 or even 480 Hertz.
Right?
Like the...
The difference between all of those it becomes less and less and less and less.
But...
The low persistence.
The image clarity.
The motion clarity.
Of this display.
Is incredible.
Like...
Dude.
I couldn't miss.
And this is...
This is over...
Oh this is over two different sessions with the monitor.
Because first I recorded the...
I recorded the...
So you weren't just like on one day.
I recorded the video that was sponsored by Samsung Display on the panel tech.
We uploaded that to LTT during the show.
Actually did really well.
And it was like...
It was your perfect sponsored video.
Because Samsung basically went...
Um...
We have money to market this.
We think it's really, really great.
So here's our bag of marketing money.
Um...
We'd like you to thank these Nobel Prize winners for the amazing research and development that
they've done to make this technology possible.
Um...
Please...
Um...
Discuss...
Some of the advancements that we made in our...
Like...
Pico...
Freaking...
Um...
Inkjetting process for...
You know...
Increasing the pixel density.
And...
Um...
Otherwise...
See you later.
So we...
We pretty much just made the video we would've made anyway.
Yeah.
And...
Included some shoutouts that are cool anyways.
And included some shoutouts that were cool anyway.
And...
Uh...
I got an opportunity to check these things out before I would've gotten a chance to.
Which I love anyway.
So it was...
It was...
It was an ultimate kind of win-win-win.
And...
Part of that shoot was over two different sessions.
So first, while we were doing the shoot.
And then after the shoot, I actually got like on a little bit as well.
With no audio.
I was sitting there putting together like five killstreaks.
Then, things got really interesting.
Because I was just on the LTT Benchmark account that time.
Which is not ranked at all.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm not saying that my personal account is super ranked up or anything either.
But it is ranked like I am.
It was pretty good at one point.
Yeah.
It's been a long time though.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's a lot...
It'll match make me with different people than the LTT Benchmark account.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was signed into my account because we had some issues with our Microsoft credentials for LTT Benchmark.
Or actually, it was for...
Whose was it?
I think it was Ploof's.
It was Ploof's account.
Because he was the one who was working on the other monitor the previous day or something like that.
So, I was less signed into my own account.
And same thing.
Both on camera and off camera.
Dude.
I just...
I couldn't be stopped.
And the thing is, you're probably watching that going, man, I've seen...
You know, I've seen compilations that are like so much better than this.
Right?
But that's the thing.
I'm not that good.
You guys have seen me play video games.
Many times.
Over many years.
And it's not about...
It's not about just the hertz.
Because you can make a very strong argument for there being a certain number of hertz past which...
There could not possibly be any perceivable difference to a gamer.
Because our reaction times are measured in milliseconds.
So, if the difference between...
Mine are getting slower.
Yeah.
The difference between one monitor and another is two milliseconds.
Or one millisecond.
Or a fraction of a millisecond.
You're not gonna notice that.
Right?
But it's about the constantness of the input that you're getting.
And the better ability to track a moving object.
Which we've talked about before.
And also said there's a limited return on that continued investment.
But that combined with the motion clarity.
Yeah.
Is what really changed the game for me.
Because every single frame is a crystal clear image.
Now, what's interesting...
Further interesting.
What's also interesting is that Nvidia is working on their own approach to solving this that does not involve OLED.
And that they claim...
It's hard for me to tell because I didn't have them side by side.
But it's really good.
But they claim gives even better low persistence.
Like even better motion clarity than this 360 hertz OLED.
And that's...
Shoot.
I forget what they're calling it.
But that's in the short circuit video where we do the world's first unboxing of the 4080 Super.
So we get through kind of the Super lineup.
And then we move over to their new G-Sync demo.
And basically what Nvidia has figured out...
Pulsar.
That's it.
What Nvidia has figured out...
Is it called G-Sync Pulsar or Nvidia Pulsar?
Yeah.
What Nvidia has figured out how to do is combine variable refresh rate with backlight strobing.
Or essentially what on an OLED would have to be like black frame insertion.
So with backlight strobing to essentially like shine a snapshot of the most clear still of that frame at your eyes.
Then turn off the backlight while the pixels are all shifting.
So this is on an IPS type display.
And so you do get some overshoot artifacting.
So I talk in the video about how the character model and the text above their head kind of has a ghost in front.
Uh-huh.
At the leading edge, right?
Interesting.
Because you're seeing the beginning of that transition.
Oh, that's really...
I wonder if subconsciously if you're going to detect what way things are moving that way.
But the...
Well, that's not new.
That's not new.
What's new is just that the image, the main image is super clear.
And that you can do it with VRR now.
Which they couldn't before because, I mean, man, like think about that.
Backlight strobing with variable refresh rate means that you have to drive the pixel change differently
according to the different colors that's shifting between because all the transitions are different speeds.
Then you have to drive them at different voltages depending on for how long that frame will be displayed.
Because it could be different from one frame to the next.
Like, what?
But it looks like they've cracked it.
I do think personally, just having seen some of those motion artifacts, that I would prefer the OLED approach.
Even if the motion clarity isn't quite as good.
But Nvidia seems to think that for competitive gaming, their solution is going to be the better one.
But, you know, it all remains to be seen.
And it'll be locked in G-Sync.
So you'll have to have...
Yeah, you'll have to be on Nvidia.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
That's the goal.
Yeah, that's what Nvidia is all about.
Make sure you get in that ecosystem.
So I was blown away, man.
Samsung display is crushing it right now.
And that Alienware 360 hertz, whatever Ploof says about the bigger 240 hertz one, I...
You guys got to do some blind tests.
Well, we can't because they're different sizes.
So his is 4K and 32 inches, 31 and a half inches or something like that.
The one that he likes better and 240 hertz.
And the one I like better is the 1440p 360 hertz 27 inch.
And there could be a number of reasons that I was finding that one better.
It's obviously going to run at higher frame rates.
So I'm going to have less latency from that in addition to the monitor refreshing more frequently.
Ploof's a better gamer than me.
Like, it's not close.
He's a significantly better gamer than me.
So maybe it's one of those things where I need every edge that I can get.
I also found that having not gamed on a small monitor.
Like, not...
Like, really tried.
You know?
Like, it just started...
It just started happening so well.
I was like...
Like, I got kind of into it.
And I haven't really done that in a long time.
Like, my monitor at home is 38, 42 inches or something like that.
So I haven't used a small monitor in a while.
And there's a reason that competitive gamers use them.
You can see everything.
Yeah.
I don't...
Like, first of all, I actually like 1440p as a resolution for a desktop monitor.
I don't...
I genuinely don't think I even want beyond that.
Like, I've seen the comparison.
I don't think I care.
I care more about, like, panel quality, stuff like that.
And a TV, sure.
Yeah, whatever.
But I'm talking monitor.
And beyond 27 inches, I find, it starts to become, like, just unreasonable for gaming.
Um...
Yeah, there's other people in the chat that are, you know, see again in full plane chat
says, yeah, 27 inch for me is the sweet spot.
Yeah, I agree.
I know Ploof plays a lot of more scenic games as well, though.
Yeah.
And when you...
It could be nice for that.
If you're not talking competitive, if you're talking immersion, forget about it.
And if you're...
27 inches is like looking out through a submarine port hole, you know, at the world compared
to, you know, like a giant ultrawide or something like that.
Yeah.
And if you're trying to lounge and, like, get immersed, sure, 100%.
Um...
But...
I don't know.
I think that's one of the reasons why I like 27 inches, is because it's kind of on the maximum
threshold, I would say, of the competitive side.
So you get a little bit of both, I find.
Of course, the topic we're supposed to be talking about right now is AI things at the
show.
So why don't we talk about the AI monitor?
What the heck?
I would like you, without looking at chat...
What's the point?
Sure.
I would like you to try to get it.
I genuinely have no idea.
It has some kind of neural processor in the monitor itself.
Okay.
I will give you a hint.
It is nothing to do with image quality.
Yeah, that was the only...
I tried to dive on that.
Yeah.
Nothing to do with image quality.
Nothing to do with image quality.
Could you, like, change inputs by speaking to it?
That's a cool idea.
No.
No, not even a little.
Okay.
Um...
It doesn't have anything to do with controlling the monitor itself.
No.
Would you like another hint?
Yeah.
Okay, it's from MSI.
Well, it's a hint.
What does MSI do?
Okay, it's from MSI's gaming division.
Can you control, like, Afterburner profiles or, like, launch games?
No.
No.
Can you change RGB profiles?
Um...
There's an RGB element.
Okay.
Is it, like, whatever MSI software thing on your desktop and you can interface with it that
way?
No.
I really run it out of ideas.
He's so frustrated.
This is great.
Okay.
Before you look, before you look at anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why don't I tell you the RGB element and then I'll see if you can guess the rest.
Okay, sure.
Okay.
So, um, using, using their AI processing that is built into the monitor, it's not, like,
an external soft piece of software you run on your computer.
So, it's in the monitor.
Wait, just one sec.
Does this have to be web connected then?
No, I don't think so.
So, it's local.
I believe so.
Okay.
That's kind of neat.
Alright.
So, using that, um, it has, like, an RGB light bar at the bottom of the monitor that
can, that can mirror your health bar in League of Legends.
This poor brain is just completely broken over there.
There's just so many things.
It's so unnecessary for it to be done this way.
This isn't the only product that I feel like that about, to be very clear.
Um, do you just control what information the light bar is doing through the thing?
So, here's what it does.
Okay.
It monitors elements on screen.
Yeah.
And, like, cause there's no, there's, to my knowledge, okay, there's no API ability
to do that.
So...
Yeah, so it monitors a certain thing and...
So it's, yeah, you tell it, hey, look here.
And if it looks like this, or like that, or like that, change the light bar behavior, like,
whatever.
So, it would be a way for you to have, like, a flashing notification if you're low on health.
Crazy.
And, and that is, honestly, could be very easily used for cheating.
Um...
Okay.
We're getting there.
Alright.
Okay.
Would you like to know what it does?
What?
Oh, I thought we just figured that out.
Oh, that's what they, a light bar does.
Not for now.
Okay.
Would you like to know what the monitor does?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What does the monitor do?
So, the demo they had running...
See the smile on his face right now?
Oh, God.
It's about to be gone.
Yeah, I'm sure.
The demo they had running was monitoring the minimap area, and any time an opposing hero...
Oh!
...approached your viewport, it would pop up a circle...
No!
...with an arrow, indicating...
On the screen!
...where they were, on the screen, completely independent of any software running on your PC.
So, as far as I can tell...
So it's not detectable.
...completely impossible to detect.
Because it's drawn on top of the image coming from...
Yes.
Yeah.
Wow!
Uh...
I wonder if anti-cheats are gonna have to use, like, a hardware detection.
Anti-cheats...
And just ban those screens.
They don't do much anyways, but...
Yeah, but you can, you can spoof the edid of a monitor very easily.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's no way that'll help.
We are gonna have to have, flippin' a camera, you're gonna have to have a dedicated camera...
It doesn't always solve the problem.
Like, plugged into your computer, pointed at your frickin' screen, and your hands.
Doesn't always solve the problem.
Well, if it's pointed at your hands, and your screen...
There's still ways.
It's...
It's gonna be better!
It...
Yes.
You will be able to...
So they're gonna have to have their own AI, that checks for any motion or any key press...
...that doesn't correspond to what's happening.
There are cheating softwares out there that are designed for when your chat asks you to point a camera at the screen.
It has a mode for that.
Yeah, but what about the hands, too?
Yeah, well, they don't...
They won't be aim-hacking at that point in time.
I don't actually think aim-hacking is super popular these days, because it's easier to detect than a lot of other phones.
I think a webcam pointed at your hands and the screen...
It's gonna stop a lot of it.
No, I mean continuously.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I don't mean sometimes.
I mean, like, the anti-cheat software is continuously...
It's fed this video feed?
...continuously monitoring the video feed.
Wow.
Yeah.
Like, that's...
Sheesh.
That's the only solution at this point.
It's an actual cheating monitor.
That's amazing.
I, um...
Yeah, multiplayer games right now are just plagued.
Completely plagued with cheaters.
Tarkov, because I like talking about Tarkov when it comes to cheaters, because there sure do be a lot of them, and it's a really brutal game to have them in.
Um, they just did a ban wave of 11,000 players, and people were responding to the tweet of this ban wave with screenshots of, like, extremely obvious cheating still going on.
And, like, there's one where it's, like, the flea market in the game, which is, like, effectively, like, an auction house or a trading post or whatever you want to call it.
Or a flea market.
Or a flea market.
Yeah.
Um...
Interesting.
We definitely needed some alternate names for that.
Well, no, no, like, I'm saying it works the same way in this game.
No, I know.
It's just a continuation of that thing you did last week, where you were like, what's a word for whatever?
I don't know, maybe that word you just said, I can't remember what it was.
Let me do that.
Um...
Aw, man.
Classic Luke.
Yeah, yeah.
Um...
Yeah, there's, you can see people's profiles on there.
So you can see someone like, oh, this person's, like, level 12, and they've sold, like, billions of rubles worth of stuff on, like, yeah, probably not.
Um...
I don't know.
It's a thing.
Precedents, yeah.
That was it.
Anyways.
So, yeah, I thought you'd be, I thought you'd be pretty ticked off.
Yeah, that's sick.
About that.
Yeah, cheating monitors, especially because that...
Cheating, I think, I would wager that cheating has probably been the worst in the first-person shooter space.
Shooters in general, probably.
I don't know.
I mean, I think it's pretty bad everywhere, innit?
Yeah, there's map hacking.
Yeah.
In, like, top-down games.
Like, StarCraft 1.
Like, map hacks, like, if you could just see...
You could just see...
You could remove fog of war.
Everything.
That's, like, an insane advantage.
Yeah.
But I don't think those have been as popular.
I know one of the ways...
This actually seemed really smart to me.
I think this was League of Legends.
I don't remember who it was.
One of the ways that they helped push against map hacking is the server...
Ooh, I might say this wrong.
If you're interested in this, look it up, because I'm probably gonna say some part of how this works wrong.
But I'm gonna try.
Um, the edge of your fog of war...
If another player isn't within a certain distance of it, the server will not tell you where they are.
So you actually can't map hack the whole way.
Interesting.
But if they are within...
So you could map hack a little bit...
Yes.
...and then have a monitor...
Yeah.
...that can check from your minimap, then you could get an extra...
Another big one for this, for me in my opinion...
Uh, yeah, Rocket League.
Cheating in Rocket League.
Yeah, there are ways to cheat in Rocket League, but I think it's a little bit more blatant.
Um...
What was I gonna say?
Yeah, something that's crazy about this is the monitor notification could probably linger.
So if someone just like barely comes on screen for a second...
And you know, you're playing, so you're not staring at the minimap 100% of the time...
You might not have seen it.
The monitor notifications can be bigger...
And could probably persist for more than that, like, one second.
So...
Yeah, I don't know.
That's rough.
Cheating has been around since the beginning.
But I strongly believe it's worse now than it ever has been.
My reasoning for that, um...
Is the barrier of entry is zero right now.
The barrier of entry right now is a credit card.
That's it.
You don't need to know anything.
Back in the day, you kinda needed to know what you were doing.
You kinda...
You had to work to find them.
Now there's, like, ads on YouTube.
Like, it's...
It's crazy now.
It's blasted in front of your face constantly.
Uh...
There's no barrier of entry at all.
You just have to pay for it.
Um...
It's...
It's never been easier to just get another copy of the game, either.
A lot of games are free to play.
Yeah, you would have to go to the store.
Yeah.
That's another barrier, right?
Yeah.
Like, there's another layer on top of it.
Um...
And, yeah.
I think it's...
It's just very rampant right now.
So the solution is in-person gaming events.
Yeah.
Or beauty contests.
Yeah.
Bring lands back.
Speaking of lands, I told Chase today...
Make lands great again.
It's gonna be...
It's gonna be another probably four or five months before the Badminton Center is built.
So I was thinking we should do another land at my place.
Maybe, like, a bit lower key.
Hopefully I don't get sick for two months this time.
Yeah.
Uh...
Maybe just...
Just the basement this time.
Nice.
But, um...
Ooh...
I talked to Hisense.
Okay.
This is not an AI topic.
Good lord.
We could talk about CES probably for the entire show.
Never do any merch messages.
Yeah.
Never do any other topics.
Sick.
Um...
I talked to Hisense about getting hands-on with their 110-inch.
And they're apparently gonna work on it.
This thing is...
Wild.
Double the peak brightness of the TCL, which you saw.
Whoa!
Double...
10,000 nits peak brightness.
Double the local dimming zones of the TCL.
You saw 40,000 dimming zones.
Which, I mean...
It already wasn't really a problem.
I didn't see the classic black desktop background white mouse cursor scenario.
But, in watching a variety of different movies, it didn't seem like a problem.
And, uh...
What else is there that's...
I mean, 90...
Porto in Floatplane Chat.
Bro wants a flashbang.
Yeah.
More like a flash the whole time.
Just...
Yeah.
Oh, uh...
Dan's...
Dan's messaging me.
Um...
Oh, speaking of, um...
Speaking of things that we could do the whole...
The whole time, uh...
Without...
Talking about, um...
Merch messages.
Let's do some merch messages.
Oh, is that what he's doing?
Hey!
No, that's not what he messaged me about.
Uh... Dan, I don't know...
I don't know what it is.
You...
Uh...
Do you have the new...
Uh...
Oh, I...
I don't know.
Uh...
Uh...
Uh...
Oh, it should redirect.
It should redirect.
It should be fine.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Nope.
I just don't know what it is.
I can send it to you.
No, I was just using Google login before.
Uh...
Yeah, it was using both.
But, I...
I can send it to you.
Can you just...
Fine, whatever.
Uh...
The point is...
Merch messages are the way to interact with the show.
Don't send a super chat or a Twitch bit.
Send a merch message.
All you get to do is go on LTTstore.com and in the cart there'll be a little box whenever
we're live where you can leave a merch message.
You can send a little pop-up for, you know, your friends or your mom who's watching.
Be like, hi mom!
Or you can have producer Dan read your merch message and either forward it to someone at
the company who can help find an answer for you, respond to it himself, or curate
it for me and Luke to address later in the show.
So Dan's gonna show you guys how it works by firing over a couple of merch messages to
us.
And I'm gonna try and get my bloody dashboard open and it will be...
I sent it to your email that should be on that laptop.
And it will be great!
It will be like Frosted Flakes!
Do you want me to read you one or do you want to get logged in first?
Seriously?
That's the password?
Yeah.
Well, gee, I guess I don't blame myself for not remembering that.
I didn't send it.
Skill issue.
Okay, let's see.
But it is bad.
We should change it at some point.
Don't forget you can just close those tabs and scoot right down to the curated.
Close those tabs.
Yeah, just click on incoming.
The thing at the top.
He's so bothered.
I like to scroll.
You know what?
I'm not gonna do it.
There you go.
Got him.
Okay, alright.
Hit me Dan.
Sure.
I've been using an LG OLED TV for a few years now and have been thinking of upgrading.
For someone wanting a larger display, would you recommend a real monitor or a TV?
Ugh.
So, it's tough, right?
I was using a TV as my monitor for a bit there.
I even went as far as getting my hands on the service remote for the LG C whatever.
The C1, I think was what I was, C10.
I was running something at the time, which ended up upsetting some people because they
were like, man, now that Linus is talking about the service remote, like how to edit
the dimming timeout and stuff like that, now LG's gonna lock that down.
I'm just like, guys, I can't not cover cool tech because then people will know about it.
You know?
Yeah.
Like, on the one hand, like, I'm sorry, that really sucks.
It's not the first time.
Did it actually happen?
That we've covered, I don't remember, but there have been times where we've covered
something really cool that was like kind of underground and like-
It's patched out.
And then it's gotten patched out, which like sucks, but that's what we're supposed to do
is like cover cool stuff.
Anyway, the point is, even with the service remote tricks, there were compromises running
a TV as a monitor.
I would expect the newer ones would have less compromise because now LG is competing against
much improved quantum dot mini LED backlit competitors and they're competing against
Samsung's QD OLED that is not as sensitive to being overdriven as LG's W OLED.
So they're probably going a little bit more aggressive in terms of how hard they're driving
things and, you know, how much of the screen they'll allow to be white before it just is dimmed
beyond recognition.
But even with that said, I think I would probably lean towards getting a monitor, especially
because there are so many monitors out there that are TV sized, if you're into that sort
of thing, but have the creature comforts that are associated with plugging a monitor and
running DisplayPort.
So potentially having higher refresh rates available to them than what you can push over
HDMI 2.1.
having multiple, multiple inputs.
So DisplayPort, HDMI, I think most of them don't really have anything more legacy.
Okay, so that point's a little less valid.
But having an OSD, like an on-screen display that is more designed for desktop use, that's
easily accessible.
But there's just, there's things that are nice about having a monitor instead of a TV
on your computer.
I-L-L-D, hope you're well.
Question, we always see the cool stuff from a show like CES.
What's a piece of tech you've seen at a show that you felt was a huge disappointment?
There's tons.
I mean, yeah.
It's usually like half the show.
Let me, yeah, let me put it this way.
I think we made about between 20 and 25 videos this year.
Hmm.
Presenting at CES were hundreds of companies.
I mean, some of them are just things we don't really cover, but a lot of it ends up being
not really what you would expect.
Yeah.
It is also a buyer's show.
Um, so you'll get stuff like back when I frequented CES, which I actively dislike Las
Vegas, so I'm happy I don't anymore.
But, um, back when I frequented CES, half the show would be phone cases.
Which you'd think, like, why, like, why do all these tech reviewers and news people want
to cover phone cases?
Well, they don't.
But there is buyers there.
Yeah.
It's a networking show.
Yeah.
So it's a show for multiple types of people.
Speaking of disappointments at the show, let's talk about something that didn't disappoint
me at the show.
Hmm.
AI Steak Griller.
Yeah, I know.
Poor Dan.
They claim it'll do three steaks in 90 seconds cooked to perfection.
Look at this.
It's poor head.
It's going to explode.
Just.
How, how did they do this?
You might ask.
Yeah.
Actual, like, machine learning.
So what, so what they do is they, they punish the model or that they, they punish it for
taking any longer than it absolutely has to.
So for every second that it takes, it gets punished.
And then it gets punished based on user feedback on the quality of the meal.
And so they've gotten it far enough that it should be pretty darn decent.
But then what's really cool is that they use machine learning to tune it to your preferences.
So it knows how thick the meat is.
It knows what kind of cut it is.
You, you enter that and then you basically go, yeah, I want it done medium rare and it'll
cook it medium rare.
And then you will fill in feedback and go, that was basically blue.
That was disgusting.
That was disgusting.
And it'll go, oh, okay.
So you actually like your steak done well.
Uh, let me deal with that for you.
And it'll, and it'll cook it well the next time, according to your preferences.
Yeah.
Uh, they talked about this part isn't done yet, but they talked about having the ability
to have the device know where it is and go, okay, yeah, I'm in Texas.
So like medium is blue, you know, versus I'm in.
Whoa.
So to account for kind of regional differences and preferences.
Control preferences, regional preferences.
Yeah, yeah.
Steak, chicken, uh, it'll do some veggies, it'll do burgers.
Uh, they have a pizza adapter for it.
So it's like sous vide version two.
The, there is no water involved.
Yeah, I mean, yeah.
But it's, it's supposed to be like easy, quick.
In regards to smart kitchen gadgets.
And the heating elements move, they're on motors, and reach temperatures of up to 1600 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wait, so this is like a box.
They cook vertically.
So you put them in this like clam shell thing, slide it in vertically.
Like a server blade.
And then it like, it like cooks the steak, then sears it.
You can tell how much sear you want.
Then like pulls off, lets the juices kind of, you know, do their thing.
There's a drip tray.
And the whole, the whole thing, you just pull off the, the tray things, they're magnetic.
So you huck them in the dishwasher.
Theoretically, you could cook a steak dinner.
How thin were these steaks that they cooked in?
Uh, about like that.
They didn't actually cook anything at the show.
So I want a review unit before I'm going to accept, you know, everything they said as gospel truth.
But I also do understand how machine learning could be useful for this application.
Oh, for sure.
If I tell it like, Hey, that's not how I like my steak cooked.
And it goes, Oh, okay.
Right.
So we had it nailed down for kind of the thin cuts, but these thicker cuts, it seems like
we're going to have to kind of fine tune this or that.
Man, it's kind of cool.
And I would not think it would be possible to cook steak that fast.
Like just how do you heat up the inside of it that fast?
I don't know.
Do they say you can, you can cook it to any degree of wellness within that amount of time?
That I don't know.
Probably not.
I didn't ask that.
Yeah.
Cause you can sear the outside of a steak that fast.
Sure.
He is so not convinced it does chicken though.
I am highly sus.
Now we've got it.
Now we've got it.
I'll say that much.
No, I'm just highly sus.
But it does chicken.
Just highly sus.
I'm highly sus too.
It's interesting though.
It is def, that is definitely interesting.
Cause honestly like.
That's a real use case for it.
And cooking takes a lot of time.
And not cooking is really expensive.
At least here.
There's so many variables.
I know there's some place, like in, like in Taiwan and stuff.
Like it's actually fairly, if you know where to go and stuff, it's actually quite affordable
to eat out for more meals because the restaurants are kind of like built for that almost.
And yada yada yada.
But around here it's not structured that way.
Eating out for every meal is incredibly expensive.
Tree Fingers says, I'm a chef and I can tell you with through years of experience trying
to rush steaks, it doesn't work like that.
You can't just blast it with tons of heat.
It cooks outside in.
I know.
Yeah.
I know.
Yeah.
This is why I'm sus.
But they, they, I think, are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
I think we're getting one.
Wolf thinking full plain chat.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because the AI grill was hallucinating again.
Oh man.
Oh no.
Yeah.
It's like one in every 100 things you put into the AI oven just comes out completely black.
It's like charred.
It's a piece of actual coal.
I mean, I was telling you about my existing oven so that would be no worse than what I
have already.
Fair enough.
I was just trying to think, what else was, there was one that was a major disappointment.
There's an AI mattress that I kept asking, okay, what makes it AI?
And it's like, well, we have an algorithm.
And I was like, right.
But what makes it AI?
And they're like, our algorithm.
Right.
But your algorithm, what's AI about it?
It's, it takes inputs and then makes adjustments.
I'm like, that's not AI.
That's actually not what that means.
We're supposed to do a couple more topics now, I guess, according to Dan.
We are doing topics.
We're talking about CES.
We're talking about CES.
No, this is still the first topic of the show, Luke.
It's, it has, it's one major topic with many microtopics.
The second one.
It's the second one.
Uh, yeah.
Micro rapids.
Sorry, what?
They are micro rapid topics.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Why don't you pick a next main topic?
Notable non AI demos.
Um, really?
Okay.
I'm interested.
I think CES is interesting.
It was a big TV show this year.
Yeah.
And for a long time, I was really bored by what was going on with TVs.
Yeah.
They were making them thinner.
And it's like, I feel like you haven't cared about TVs since the one that you just got,
basically.
Oh my God, who cares?
Yeah, I don't care at all.
So what, it's thinner.
It sits, it sits on a thing by the wall.
It's like more annoying to carry around because it feels more fragile.
Like it's like, it's ridiculous.
And like, especially what LG was doing with their OLEDs for a long time where they'd be
like, like this thin at the top and then have a giant caboose.
Giant caboose.
Just a big butt.
It's like, who do they think they are?
My wife?
She doesn't have a giant caboose.
I just mean, it's all relative.
Um.
Oh my goodness.
The point is, the point is...
The point is, the whole thinness war never made any sense to me.
What were we trying to achieve with any of that?
I liked it at the beginning.
Sure.
I mean...
Because TVs were like big chunks.
Sure.
I mean, going from, but going from here to here was a lot more meaningful than going
from here to here.
To paper.
And especially from here to here, right?
Like the, that, that TV that I've got in my theater room right now, the TCL.
It's like this thick.
And who cares?
Do you notice that when you're watching content on it?
No.
No?
Of course not.
Because that's ridiculous.
And then there was the, the bezel war.
That was kind of, kind of before that.
Kind of at the same time as that.
To a degree, having thinner bezels, I would say is a benefit.
But I also think that there's a certain point you reach where it probably doesn't matter
that much.
And for, I, I still, you know, I think for, for a show piece, if you want to have like
a bezel-less TV or something like that, you know, for an art display or something.
Sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
But in your general, you know, $399 at Best Buy.
Most people aren't going to care.
People aren't going to care.
$799, $1299.
It's fine.
I don't think, I don't think you need that at a, at a certain point.
And then there was the resolution war.
1080p, yeah, not the be all and end all, but it's fine for most things.
And 4K is to the vast majority of people out there.
Very, very good.
Indiscernible from, from, from retina resolution.
And so, you know, for years at CES, we were looking at, you know, world's first, you know,
however many pixels per inch, world's first 8K display, world's first, man, I'm trying
to remember.
We saw ones that were higher resolution than 8K and we're kind of asking ourselves, okay,
forget about the content.
Let's assume, you know, upscaling gets perfect and we can watch any kind of content on this.
Unless I get, unless I get this, and it was impressive.
It's not like I was like, wow, this is really cool.
Upscaling's not perfect, by the way.
It was, it was cool, but unless you were getting, you know, this close or you're trying
to read a newspaper on your TV, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't a clear, there wasn't
a clear use case for it, right?
And I don't feel the same way about the brightness war.
Because once you've experienced good HDR.
I didn't, I'm going to put this out here before you go into the topic because I do
think it's actually fairly important.
I've experienced HDR a few times.
I notably, like, didn't really like a lot of the examples that I saw because the certain
bright parts of the screen would be so bright that they were like annoying to look at.
I did not experience that with the really, really, really bright SDR at your place.
Really?
Did we watch any HDR stuff?
And did you feel that way about the HDR?
Because I thought I threw on Mario movie.
I think we did and it was also fine.
Okay.
So like I, there, there have been implementations of this that I have not actually liked at all,
but more recently trying that TV, it was very good.
So well done HDR.
Yes.
Freaking awesome.
Because, because that's what the world is like.
And it's not about having a super bright image.
That's not right.
If that's what you've seen before, then it's not being handled right by your device or it's
not been mastered properly.
Yeah.
But we are nowhere near, even now, even with the 10,000 nit TV that I was talking about
from Hisense, we are even now not at the point where it is, it is similar to, you know,
standing in the sunset.
Standing outside.
Yeah.
So I was, I was talking to Andrew, one of our camera guys about this when we were in
the bus line for the shuttle after looking at the Hisense TV.
And I went, okay, dude, actually here, here, look, look, look, look with me.
We were, we were standing outside the convention center and it was kind of approaching sunset.
And one of the, uh, one of the hotel towers that was like a glass tower was kind of catching
a reflection of the sun.
That was like, it was, it was, it was dazzlingly bright, but not where you would be, you know,
uncomfortable.
It was just like, you know, the world that has a sun that shines on it.
And sometimes it reflects off of things.
And I kind of went, okay, Andrew, how many nits do you think we would need to get there?
Because it's something that our eyes can, can process.
And it's something we're going to have to achieve if we want HDR content to be like looking
through a pane of glass into the world.
And it was like, you know, hard to say, but a lot more than 10,000, which is one of the
reasons why, and I, I, I agree, like it was, it was, it was bright, but it was natural
and we're not quite there yet.
Yeah.
And that's one of the reasons that I am into the brightness war.
Bring on 15,000 nits, bring on 20,000 nits, not because every element on the screen that
is, you know, white should be blasted at 20,000 nits into your face, but because key on screen
elements where you're trying to capture, you know, the, the, the, the, the glinting of the
the glinting of the sun off the top of the waves or, or, you know, a reflection in, you
know, on a polished knight's armor or something like that.
True.
In order to accurately reflect that, pun intended, you need incredible, incredible brightness.
And I think that what we're going to see is we're going to need ambient light sensors on
TVs that are really good.
Like we've had ambient light sensing on TVs for ages.
The problem is that in the past, in a lot of cases, and I haven't, I haven't with them
in a long time because before they would always just trash the image quality.
Yeah.
I don't like, I, I, I, I would, I'd hate it.
They're pretty good on phones these days though.
So maybe they've improved a lot on TVs, but we're going to need that because you're going
to be sitting in a dark room and it's going to hit you with, you know, 20,000 nits.
Your eyes won't be adjusted for it.
And that's going to be a problem, but we're going to need perfect blacks and we're going
to need like crazy, crazy high peak brightness in order to account for all the different environments
where the TV might be used in order to really get that experience and make it feel more
lifelike.
Cause that's what it does.
It increases immersion.
Did I fire up Lord of the Rings when you were over as a demo fellowship?
Yes.
Yeah.
I was trying to think back.
Did we look at any of the like outside boat scenes?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like specifically the one where they go by the statues doing that.
Compared to any other display that I've watched that on, it was so much more natural
and now you're telling me, okay, I can have another 5,000 nits to really make the sun feel
like sun.
Yeah.
Not white.
Bring it on.
I'm here for it.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm excited.
Yeah.
Okay.
What am I supposed to be talking about right now?
Oh yeah.
Right.
Things that were not AI.
Yeah.
So Samsung's micro LED, the wall is better than before.
They weren't really giving any specs, which was extremely confusing.
Not only did they not have any displays up, but no one at the booth knew anything.
They knew sizes.
That's it.
That's basically it.
I was like, color gamut.
One thing you forgot to mention about that grill, the AI powered grill is that it's $3,500.
Oh yeah.
It's not cheap.
Yeah.
I could see it being like, if I was to consider buying one, it would be for like smash jobs,
like for the bad news center.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it'd be like, you know, we're going to have a little cantina, not cantina, more like
a canteen than a cantina, like a cafe.
Like a little, like you'll be able to get like muffins or like whatever, a little like,
you know, kind of.
Things from Costco.
Probably.
Yeah.
Or, or maybe a steak.
Right?
Like if we could make a steak in 90 seconds or whatever.
It might be okay.
And then grill some veggies in another, if it can do a steak in 90 seconds, I'm sure
it can do veggies in like 40 seconds.
I mean, if you had a rice cooker there.
Yeah.
A steak that can cook in 90 seconds.
And yeah, some veggies.
Yeah.
Then like, I see no reason why, why a small commercial, not really a kitchen, but like
canteen.
Cause I mean, if you were going to buy an oven for this, uh, canteen to cook steaks in anyways,
you're going to be spending a pretty substantial amount of money.
Yeah.
A lot of like, uh, what would you call it?
My brain wants to say enterprise, but I don't think that's what I'm going for.
Commercial.
Yeah.
There you go.
Commercial grade, like kitchen hardware is really expensive.
Um, and okay.
Apparently it's three minutes for a ribeye, which people are saying is still stupid fast.
Yeah.
I have no idea if it even is commercial grade to be clear.
Maybe it's not rated at that for that kind of like duty cycle.
Maybe it has like, yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe this is a, is a personal appliance for just bougie like executives or whatever.
I don't know, but I definitely want to check it out.
I want to know if there's any validity to what they're claiming.
They're interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Trying to think of like what else we saw that was really stand out.
I mean, PC industry wise there, there wasn't much like, uh, I mean, AMD launched a new AM4
processors, which I think is pretty cool.
Um, I got a little bit of inside baseball and to sort of where these are coming from, which
I don't think was off the record, but it felt like too much detail for the video.
Um, so the 5800 X3D they've been producing for a couple of years now.
Right.
And in that time they've had a lot of dyes that, uh, die, not die, but didn't quite make the
grade for 5800 X3D.
Yeah.
Why do we have a cheaper X3D?
Cause, uh, hey, I mean, waste not, want not, right?
So 250 bucks gets you a chip that doesn't hit the same clock speeds, but AMD is claiming,
though we haven't validated this yet, that a lot of what gives the X3D its strength is
is the cache itself is the, is the latency advantage of the cache and you don't necessarily
need more core clock speed for that.
So they're saying that gaming performance should actually be quite similar to the 5800 X3D.
So I'm, I'm pretty excited for that because there's this enormous install base of AM4 systems
out there.
And if all they've got to do to be able to keep up with the latest generation gaming
GPUs mostly, right?
Like, okay, not quite as good as a 7000 series or X3D 7000 series for that matter, or a 14th
gen or whatever, but to mostly keep up with a current gen GPU is pop a $250 chip in there.
They're going to get some money back for the chip they just took out.
Just flip it on eBay or whatever else.
That's really compelling.
And I, I, I'm here for it.
I like to see it.
Uh, I just thought it was really cool that we were seeing extra support for that platform.
I mean, realistically, AMD's main focus was their 8000 G series chips, which are pretty
much 7000 chips, but the top two have like a neural processor on neural processing unit
in them that AMD didn't really have any clear idea of what anyone was going to do with yet.
Like there's no real software that runs on it at this time that, that, that a general
consumer would care about.
Uh, but theoretically, you know, workloads will come and it's much more efficient to offload
to that compared to even using the GPU on them.
And it's the GPU.
That's really special because they had demos.
Obviously they were using frame generation and upscaling and all that kind of stuff, but
they had demos where they were running triple A games like 60 frames per second, like Baldur's
Gate three running on an on integrated graphics.
That's actually pretty nuts.
I, I, I, I, you know, back when we first started putting GPUs right on the CPU package,
you know, back when Intel first launched, uh, they're like 700 series core processors,
um, Linfield.
I was like, yo, I don't want this.
Give me more CPU compute.
Why are you wasting die space on this crap?
Now I'm bad.
Now I get it.
If we, if I'd known that this level of integration was going to give us triple A gaming.
Yeah.
At low, you know, 10 ADP, if you're lucky, right.
It's rendering, running at a lower resolution, upscaling to 10 ADP.
Um, but if I'd known integrated graphics was going to reach playing triple A games at
all, I probably would have been a lot more on board with it.
It's freaking awesome.
And it finally buries that category that you and I have both been trying to kill for the
last 10 years.
The entry level E waste graphics card.
Yeah.
I get it.
And it's been, it's been close.
Some people buy them.
I get it.
But like, please, please stop.
Please stop.
Please stop.
On board graphics is literally a better option.
And okay.
Sometimes you have an older machine that you need to put better graphics in.
I get it.
Don't buy an entry level card.
Buy used.
Get a used card that you could also just plug into it and would also be cheap.
Okay.
Don't.
Just stop.
Ah.
Oh, man.
Oh, boy.
Here comes chat.
Oh, no.
I have a GT 510.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
I use an entry level card to prop up my 4090.
It's a great seg pillar.
I like my computer to be an analog for society.
Look, look, look, look, look.
Raging Azaru.
1660 super is not the problem.
I've never had an issue with that.
I'm talking like GT 1030s.
Yeah.
Stuff that is just manufactured waste.
Yep, yep, yep.
Why don't we jump into...
Oh, here.
Hold on.
Okay.
I already talked about Wi-Fi 7 being amazing.
There's the new AMD card with 16 gigs of VRAM.
I can't, man.
Nvidia's lineup, once again, seems to be just purely designed to upsell you to the next one.
I talked about this a fair bit when they launched the 4060 series, right?
You've got the 4060 8 gig, the 4060 16 gig, and the 4060 TI, I think it is?
Or is it the...
No, the 4060 and then the TI both had 8 gigs, and then the 4060 TI 8 gig, or 16 gig.
That's right.
Where the 4060 was like dog slow, and then the TI was fast enough but didn't have enough VRAM,
and then the TI 16 gig was way overpriced.
The entire lineup is just designed to extract more money from you.
It's so blatantly obvious.
They just won't quite give you enough at every stage.
It used to be you could get kind of what was pretty much the whole experience,
and you could overclock it a bit, and you could get to that level.
They are so careful to make sure that that one cannot be as good as that one,
and you are leaving something critical on the table.
And I felt the same way with the 4070 Super, 4080...
Excuse me.
4070 Super, 4070 TI Super, and 4080 Super lineup.
The 4070 Super has 12 gigs of VRAM.
It is a $600 card with 12 gigs, and I get it.
It has a 192-bit bus, so if they wanted to strap more RAM to it,
they would either have to do some kind of like, you know,
some of it would run at half of the bandwidth or something,
or they would have to double it entirely.
They'd have to do 24 gigs of VRAM or something like that.
We've had wider buses for a long time, though.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
I mean, you could also make the argument that it is a $600 card with a 192-bit bus.
That would be equally outrageous not that so very long ago.
Yeah.
Then you step up to the 4070 TI Super, which has 16 gigs of VRAM, which is nice,
but is an $800 graphics card.
Then there's the 4080 Super, which is a great 4K high frame rate gaming card.
I was playing the new Call of Duty, Call of Duty Modern Warfare.
Can we just not?
Again, again, again?
Can we not name things like this?
I freaking hate it.
So I played the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare, and even without upscaling nonsense,
it was, and I shouldn't say nonsense because it's getting really good,
even without upscaling, it was over 100 FPS at 4K.
Like, it looked great.
It just looked great.
And with all the tomfoolery, it was like over 200, like 220, 230, 240,
like somewhere in that range.
So I was playing that on the 4080, which is 4080 Super, excuse me, which was awesome,
and it got a $200 price cut from $1,200 US dollars.
So the one kind of reasonably priced one, it's like, well, hey,
look at that Achilles tendon right there.
You know, no, don't worry about the knife.
Just here, give me your foot.
Give me your foot.
You know, right, because we're in the era where the PS5 and the Xbox series
have 16 gigs of potential available RAM.
And so it's no secret that game developers are going to be trying to utilize that as efficiently as possible.
So there's the potential for games to need that kind of VRAM,
especially if you're on PC where you're going to be running at a higher detail level than what is necessarily
going to be available to a console that's running what is essentially last gen GPU technology now.
So even if those consoles can't dedicate their entire 16 gigs, because it's shared, right, to VRAM,
on a PC, it is very clear that those kinds of overruns are going to happen, and they have already been happening.
So they released this card for $600 that is not designed to last for this generation properly.
And then it's, you know, it's $800 to get one.
But by the time you're spending $800, well, I don't know, I guess you might as well get the $1,000 one.
They can do $4K 120.
I don't know.
And I'm supposed to feel like this is a good deal because the non-super was $1,200?
I...
It's tough.
He's...
He wants an out.
That's why he started searching for things on the table.
He doesn't like the situation that he's in.
I just want to talk about something else.
Just say anything else.
Ah, well, let's not do the Union thing then, because I think that's a sad story, right?
Yeah, let's just talk about it.
Okay.
Actor Union OK's AI voiceovers.
Steam OK's AI game content.
SAG-AFTRA, the US Actors Union, has announced what they called a groundbreaking agreement
with AI voiceover company Replica Studios for actors to license digital versions of their voices
for interactive media projects for at least the next year.
According to the Union, the agreement will ensure fair negotiation and the ability for performers
to retain control over what additional works their voices are used in.
Several prominent video game voice actors expressed disapproval and questioned why they
hadn't been consulted.
In an FAQ, SAG-AFTRA claimed that the deal was approved by a union committee of actors
who frequently work in the gaming industry, and because the deal was with a single company,
it didn't require a full member vote.
So...
The union says that it's important to be involved in the early stages of the technology's development,
as this will allow them to push for fair compensation.
So in a nutshell, voice actors are upset with this deal because they wanted more.
They didn't want, you know, fair compensation for their voice likeness to just be AI'd.
They wanted to do their jobs.
They wanted to voice act.
Because their previous body of work is not necessarily enough to just extrapolate what their future, you know,
characterization of, or what their future performance could be.
And that's fair enough.
Yeah.
As for the position of the union, they're basically like, this is coming.
Deal with it, essentially, is how I read this.
And I gotta tell you, one of the things that NVIDIA wanted us to include in our booth coverage for them,
that I basically was like, no.
It was a demo that you've probably read about or even seen that other places have covered,
where you would, you walked into a virtual bar.
This was, yeah, the chick at the bar demo.
I think I saw some of this.
So there's two NPCs having a conversation over the bar as you walk in.
I'm not sure if that is large language modeled and with AI-generated voices or not.
But if you walk up, you can interact with the barkeep in any way you want, essentially, using,
I forget if it was ChatGPT-based, but it was some kind of large language model,
and have natural, I use this in extreme finger quotes, natural conversations.
There's a lot of issues I have with this.
So first of all, I told NVIDIA, like, look, I've had enough controversy last year.
I don't need 2024 to be the year of Linus promoting voice actors losing their jobs.
I just am not going to talk about this for that alone.
But also, here are my concerns.
A, it's not nearly as good as other media made it out to be.
Like, you know the AI voices in the finals?
Yeah.
I wouldn't even say they were that good.
Because in the finals, you're not expecting it to be natural, right?
It's an announcer.
It's an announcer, which is kind of a style.
Presenty, yeah.
Whereas, you know, if you were to talk to this bartender about, and they're expressing concern over your dead dog,
and you're on your way to like, you know, John Wick someone or something, right?
Like, there could be-
It's a video game.
Yeah.
This sounds very plausible.
Who knows?
There could be any tone to this conversation, and it was not that good.
Um, so that's, that's a concern.
Because, I get it.
Like, I can see where we're going with this, and I do think that we'll probably get there at some point.
Where the idea is that, you know, all the people who are getting laid off in the games industry right now can start indie studios and create gigantic worlds populated with vibrant characters using AI.
You know, like, I get the kind of, the pot of gold that's supposed to be at the end of this rain blow, right?
Um, where the games industry is struggling so hard right now.
But it's not even, like, it's not that.
And I do feel that other coverage, either, you know, they kind of got lucky on the prompts, or they just, I don't know, like, they don't talk to people.
Something, I don't know, I felt like some of the coverage of it just was not representative of the state of the tech right now.
And then the other thing for, for me is that I just, um, I felt like it was a little, I felt like it was kind of tone deaf coming back to the state of the games industry right now.
Like, as I was sitting here next to Luke, I was, I found another round of layoffs in the tech industry.
Game specific, but there's been at least a couple rounds of games industry layoffs this year, or this week.
Unity, was that this week or last week?
Crap, I'm not sure.
I know, like, basically all of this has been 2024.
Yeah.
I think, I think Unity might have been last week.
AC3 production says it was this week.
Yeah, Unity did 25% this week.
Four days ago.
Um, there was at least one other one, I think, that was also games industry this week.
And, you know, for my part, I'm just sitting here going, it would feel kind of tone deaf to do show coverage, right?
Which is generally more positive in tone for us.
Like, we're, we're not evaluating it.
I don't think there's any reasonable expectation of like a, like an objective, rigorous evaluation.
We're showing forward-looking technology demos and, you know, it's supposed to be exciting.
I'm not excited right now.
Oh, Twitch.
Twitch was another big one, which isn't, oh, Discord.
Right, Discord.
Discord was the one I saw while I was sitting here.
There's been so many.
Um, and so it just felt icky, um, to be, to be like, you know, hype manning.
Uh, hey, look how no one's going to need, oh, and it also had, uh, like real-time synchronization of the animations.
So, you know, hey, who's going to need, you know, animated animators or, yeah, uh, or voice actors.
Woo!
Let's go!
And you know what?
On paper, it sounds good.
Like any small team of four people could build a giant open world game or whatever.
But I actually have what might be a controversial take.
Oh, boy.
I don't think we need more games right now.
Oh, yeah.
I actually do agree with that.
Um, and, if anything, I think the, the just astronomical volume of games and, and the limited,
and the limited attention that people can possibly have for them and, and the potential for these kinds of tools to make them samier than they already are.
Oh, yeah.
Could be a bad thing for gamers.
Do you want to talk to, uh, average white dude with beard AI model in this game?
It's like, ugh.
I think it's going to be fatiguing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's going to be fatiguing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like, if you're going to spend the time to really tune one of these models, like Lucien Lachance, uh, an incredibly well written character from Oblivion.
Um, trying to get ChatGPT to act like him perfectly when you can't just tell it to act like him because he doesn't exist yet.
You're trying to craft this character, um, I think is going to take so long that you might as well just have a good writer, um, and a good voice actor and just get it taken care of that way.
Avon Fox says, Linus hates games, something, something, hot dogs.
Hot dogs.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, where's this going?
That's funny.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much.
Um, I don't know, man.
Like there's, but then on the other hand, okay, look, there's, okay.
One of, one of the games that I love, um, is called Freelancer.
Yeah.
And that's a game that toward the end just runs out of money.
Obviously.
They run out of the ability to, to continue to kind of expand this world and, and, and create more missions and contact and content.
And I, um, and so, you know, I look at tools like this and I go, oh man, that, that would be, they would have been able to do it.
You know, I, so freaking, I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's good for some things and it's bad for others.
It's very divisive.
Um.
Just like this divisive segue to our sponsor for the show.
Hey.
The show is brought to you today by Wicked Cushions.
Yeah.
Uh.
Thanks, by the way.
Here we go.
Cracks are not good for you, especially when you see them on your headphone cushions.
But don't worry.
Wicked Cushions offers crack-free comfort for all types of headphones.
Linus to show the WAN design ear pads for the camera.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They, uh, they have little custom, like, WAN show logo designs on them.
These are super cool.
Oh.
Uh-oh.
I'm, I meant to disclaim this.
These were made specifically for us and are not for sale.
Oh.
Sorry, everyone.
But yeah, these are, these are flippin' awesome.
I've got a little package of them that I guess I'm allowed to give Dan now that we've actually
done the spot for Wicked Cushions.
Um.
Their high-quality cushion replacements are made with sports fabric material to keep your
ears cool and cozy.
And if you're still feeling too hot to handle, they've got your ears covered with their WC
Freeze gaming ear pads.
It's a combination of a dual-layer cooling gel to keep your head cool even when your team
is feeding.
I, I love Dennis being frustrated by that because he's going to be the feeder on that team.
No offense, Dennis.
Oh.
Their ear pads are available for a wide variety of headphones and headsets.
Just check out their site at the link down below and you can quickly navigate to the
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Give your headphones a new life.
We've got them linked down below.
All right, Dan.
You ready?
Ready.
One.
Nice.
Two.
Nice!
Success!
It was bound to happen eventually.
I'm looking directly into the light.
Good catch.
Thank you.
I want to see if, uh, I've had the same headphones for like a million years.
Um, and the last time I looked, I think Wicked Cushions only supported the PC series of Sennheiser
headphones.
Like PC38X and stuff like that.
Uh, but now when I look at Sennheiser on their site, they have a bunch of options.
So maybe I can find something that'll work.
It's, um, it's possible that even if they don't list the exact model, it might be
compatible anyways.
Yeah.
I kind of doubt they would actually list my model of headphones considering they haven't
been making them in a very long time.
Um, but it would be, the PC28X pads fit all the HD500 series too.
Oh.
Oh yeah.
No, I think you should be good cause you have the 558s, I think?
595s.
Oh, 595s.
Yeah.
Uh, 598, oh my goodness.
595, yeah!
You're supported.
Which one?
595s.
Yeah, this one right here.
You're good to go.
595.
I will actually buy these.
Uh, we, it goes not quite to mine.
PC36.
It goes all the way to HD599.
It's a compatibility sheet, that makes a lot of sense.
But no support for the HD600.
That's fine.
Yeah.
Well that's the ones I use.
Got em.
Yeah, 595s, sick!
And they're the cooling ones.
Okay, I'm getting those.
Oh, you gotta, you got, which one though?
Which one though?
Are they different styles?
Yeah.
I want the cooling one at the very least.
Yeah, yeah, they've all got the cooling gel, but do you want 90s black?
Ooh.
Or do you want black camo?
I think 90s black.
It's gotta be 90s black.
It's gotta be 90s black.
Yeah.
Look how cool that looks!
I love it.
That's sick.
Yeah, that looks freaking awesome.
Sweet.
Okay, no, no judgement if you like the black camo or the regular black or whatever, but
I'm a 90s boy, so I, that's pretty, yeah, that's pretty irresistible.
I've had, I've had, yeah, the same headphones for years, and the original ones, the original
pads, like, failed and kind of broke.
Yeah, I know.
So I got replacement ones, but they're just junky, they're bad.
I've wanted new ones forever, so yeah.
I think this is a business you and I talked about like a thousand years ago.
Yeah.
And now fortunately we don't have to do it because Wicked Cushions is doing it, so that's
great.
Yeah.
We came up with a killer business idea today, just like randomly.
We were working on our review for the Fairphone.
I was talking to Jordan about it.
Like I gave him all my notes, the lab gave him all his notes, and then we were having
like a three-way meeting.
I'm just kind of talking through, okay, kind of what's the angle going to be here?
How are we going to do the intro?
What's her title?
Like that kind of stuff.
Elijah's yelling at you.
Don't spoil the idea.
No, no, I won't spoil the idea.
I know it's ours, we need it.
But it's, it's pretty, it's pretty cool because unfortunately the review of the Fairphone
is not going to be super positive.
Ah, yes.
And so we were kind of thinking about, you know, alternative solutions and we came up
with something that's kind of neat.
But that's all I have to say about that for now.
What do you want to talk about next?
Oh, the eBay thing?
Oh, oh, three, right, right, there's a thing.
Okay, yes Dan.
And then the eBay thing.
Yeah, then we'll do the eBay thing.
Sure.
Uh, hi DLL.
I have a problem with Google Workspace.
They set a hard deadline after which I lost access to my data with no further support.
Data destroyed by Google is real.
Little guy versus Google vibes.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I curated this out of the, the potentials.
Um, I don't really a hundred percent know what's going on and we're not Google.
So we can't really say anything.
I've never heard of this.
I don't know, but I'm going to unfortunately use you as a good opportunity to talk about
three, two, one storage.
Oh, um, try not to have one copy of your data.
Um, because.
Yeah.
Zero is much better.
Try not to have one.
I mean, if you don't have any, then you're not going to feel bad when it's gone.
So that is a form of strategy.
Um, that's, that's, that sucks.
I don't know what's going on there.
You know what, you know what they did recently is they shut down old Gmail accounts.
So maybe that's, it's a workspace.
Yeah.
Workspace.
I don't really know what's happening in the actual message.
I can't really tell what's actually going on.
I mean, if they set a hard deadline, then I guess the deadline is passed.
But I mean, there's a reason that everything I care about is on my NAS.
Yeah.
Um, as long as I am able to can keep those, those platters spinning.
Probably it was free workspace people are saying.
Hmm.
I, I did never take part in that.
I heard it was like a thing though.
Oh yeah.
Elijah's saying they removed the free version of Google workspace last year and gave people
time to upgrade or migrate.
And I guess that's it.
It's over.
Didn't make it.
That's rough.
But yeah, Luke's right.
Three, two, one.
Couple copies.
Yeah.
Three copies across at least two different locations.
And what's the one?
Uh, I think it's supposed to be more than one format.
Oh, okay.
Sure.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
In my opinion, the format matters less than all the other ones.
Yeah.
I don't think that's a huge deal.
Yeah.
Three copies, two locations.
I'm, I feel pretty good at that point.
That's what matters the most.
Oh, it's one ring to rule them all.
One is offsite.
Uh.
I like mine better.
I don't think that's it.
Two is types of media.
Yeah.
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Two different types of media and one of them being offsite.
Okay.
Yeah.
Thanks guys.
But basically.
The types of media ones kind of.
Multiple copies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One offsite.
LL and Big D, can you talk a bit about displays?
Why is ABL necessary?
Is power draw and heat really that big of a deal?
I dream of a greater than 1,000 nits sustained, regardless of window percentage.
Mini or micro LED, OLED, I don't care.
Well, ABL, that's, that's the auto, auto brightness, auto brightness dimming nonsense.
So, yes, power draw does matter.
And it's for more than just, you know, energy star efficiency ratings and stuff like that.
There's, there's only, there's only so hard you can, you can drive these things.
And I think that in the same way that GPU manufacturers try to limit the power draw of power virus applications like FurMark, I don't think TV manufacturers actually want you pushing.
Cause when you, when you display, you know, all, an all white, like an, like an all white window or an all white screen, you're essentially driving every single sub pixel at maximum power.
And that is going to, that's, it's going to like microwave you at a certain point.
And I don't mean that literally.
I mean, we were, we were at a demo in, in Samsung displays booth.
So take it for, with the grain of salt that you need to take it with.
But what they had was their cutie OLED next to LG's W OLED.
And this was, they said both current gen.
And the scene that they had was a candle burning in the middle of the display.
I would say it was probably about a 10 to 15% window.
Yeah, maybe, maybe 10, maybe 10%.
So, so a bright candle burning down the middle of the monitor.
And they had thermal cameras pointed at both of these displays.
Now, I don't know for sure that they didn't have an insulating material on the back of the LG display.
Like I can't, I can't prove that.
But assuming Samsung display had any integrity whatsoever, it was two of the same image playing at the same luminance level on an LG.
An LG, they didn't say it was LG, but it was obviously LG because it was W OLED and nobody else makes that.
So on an LG TV and a Samsung TV.
And the LG TV was running so hot that I couldn't touch it.
I'm trying to remember the exact temperature, but it was, it was over 60 degrees.
And they claimed that if they left it running for long at the surface of this TV was, was, could burn you.
Yes.
And they claimed that if they left it running long enough, it could reach like in excess of 70 or 80.
And so in response to your, to your question, you know, why can't we just drive a 100%?
That's really dangerous to be clear.
Not, not just for like burning yourself, but for burning your house.
Like kids.
Yeah.
Stuff like that.
Yeah.
So to, to, to answer your question, why can't we just drive the whole panel at 100% brightness?
It's because we can't.
There, there's actually a fun rabbit hole to go down.
Incredibly bright LEDs and how to deal with how much heat they generate.
Oh yeah.
They have to be like water cooled and stuff.
It's crazy.
It's actually like pretty cool.
DIY perks did a great video where he builds himself an artificial sun and he gets into the
whole like, like physics of how the lens has to be different so that the rays are, are parallel
rather than like this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's a whole, it's a whole thing.
It's a great video.
Go, go, go check it out.
Um, but one of the, one of the things that, uh, he had to do was deal with cooling the
bloody thing.
Uh, we also saw that at, oh, what are they?
Kronos.
I want to say, um, Kronos camera.
Let me, let me, let me just check this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cron technologies.
These guys, uh, we did a, we did a tour with these guys a number of years ago and, uh,
they do high speed cameras, which if you guys are familiar with, know, you'll know, need
a ton of light in order to perform their best.
So they have a controlled room with zero flicker, uh, LED lighting where they can do
test footage and test their cameras.
And those lights are like DIY water cooled because they're, you know, big geeks and watch
our channel and stuff.
And there, there, there are, there are peeps, um, but it's super cool.
And I can't remember if that ended up in the tour or not, but it was definitely one of
the highlights for me was seeing their water cooled, water cooled LED lights so that they
can get it bright enough in this room to shoot high frame rate.
Um, footage.
Very cool.
Wow.
Yeah.
See, that's super cool.
I love stuff like that.
Cacksmith apparently did it too.
All right, Dan, hit me.
Last one I got for you.
Hey DLL, we use RFID, uh, RFID name tags for computer access in healthcare all the time.
What do you think about this being more popular in the consumer space?
Also AI in the ER is crazy for diagnostics.
Um, computer access and healthcare.
I mean, yeah, I, the thing about the computer space is our devices are not shared the same
way they are in a corporate or educational or, uh, or healthcare environment.
Right.
Like it's, uh, like, uh, you know, uh, okay.
Like I'm trying, I'm thinking back to our home PC when I was growing up, right?
Like there was one computer in the house because you know, everyone didn't have their Chromebook
for school and their phone and, you know, and a gaming desktop maybe in the room or whatever.
Right.
Like Windows XP login with all the profiles.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
What value would there have been to me having a name tag with an RFID chip in it to log into
that?
Yeah.
You know, very, very little.
Um, I think that there's probably cases where there could be use for it, you know, like public
library.
Okay.
I need to use the internet at the public library.
I use my RFID card, but with the ubiquity of, of cell phones and mobile network connectivity,
I, I, I absolutely recognize that there are people who still rely on public libraries for
internet access, but I think that it's a lot less common than it was in the, in the early
two thousands.
Public libraries do a lot of other cool stuff though.
Yes.
But I'm just talking about like the computer lab at the public library for internet access.
That was a huge thing.
Like when I was a teenager and now is definitely not as much of a, of a necessity for, for as
many people, um, like consumer consumer RFID access.
Like, uh, I can think of very few things that those two sentences go together with.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, door locks and stuff like that, but that's not really, um, not, it's
not like computer access.
Um, I, you know, I, I would be super down for, to have an RFID chip like in my finger or something
like that.
So, you know, someone in full point chat mentioned that biohacking.
Yeah.
Just like every time, you know, or if it's in my palm and then there's just like, um, just,
you know, an app on my phone that when I'm holding it, it's just like always authenticated
for everything and just as, you know, tied into my password manager and uses that, um,
what's it called again?
Huh?
Uh, what's that, what's that thing called again?
The rabbit.
Uses the rabbit R1 to just automatically enter passwords whenever my, you know, my, my RFID
chip in my hand is present or something.
Like if we could, if we could automate stuff like that, man, that's, that's, that's game
changing for, for consumer.
Um, but it's not multi-user access.
So I wouldn't, I wouldn't need it for that.
Um, I've got one installed in the back of my hand between my thumb and forefinger.
Yeah.
I'd, I'd be, I'd be super down.
I'd be super down as a Christian.
This is terrifying.
I'm not sure.
I, you know what?
I have to, I have to admit, I'm not like hyper familiar with the Bible or anything like
that, but I'm not familiar, um, with any kind of, um, issue with, oh, people are Mark
of the beast.
Okay.
Hold on a second.
Now I, now I got to Google this Mark of the beast RFID chip in your thing.
Um, okay.
The beast coming out of the sea is like a leopard with feet, like a bear's.
Okay.
Now hold on just a minute here.
What's stamped image of the emperor's head on every coin of the Roman empire.
Okay.
This is clearly going to take a little bit longer.
The YouTuber.
Mark of the Mr. Beast.
Mr. Beast.
All right.
Uh.
Mark put on the forehead of those who worship.
I don't know, dude.
Okay.
I'm totally lost.
Yeah, I'm not.
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm clearly going to need a little bit more.
Okay.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Elijah's got me.
Hey.
Hey.
Yeah.
Hey, revelations 1315.
Here we go.
And I was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast.
So the image of the beast might even speak in cousin.
Um, yeah, I think this is not happening today.
Um, why don't we do another topic?
eBay pays $3 million to avoid prosecution.
And this one's a doozy.
They have agreed to pay a $3 million penalty.
The statutory maximum.
You should have seen the look on his face.
He hadn't read this yet.
This is a wild story, dude.
The statutory maximum in order to settle criminal charges in a cyber stalking case where several
former eBay employees harassed a pair of married e-commerce bloggers who critically
covered a litigation issue involving the company.
So basically bloggers said something mean about eBay because of a litigation issue that
eBay was having.
So eBay had several employees who harassed them.
In 2019, seven, that's actually more than what I would consider to be several.
Yeah.
Seven employees, including eBay's former senior director of safety and security, began sending
David and Ina Steiner harassing messages as well as disturbing packages including live cockroaches and spiders,
a pig fetus, a funeral wreath, and a book about dealing with the death of a spouse.
Is this a movie about serial killers?
What the f*** is going on here?
Pornographic publications were sent to a neighbor's house under David Steiner's name and furthermore
three of the employees flew from California to Boston, sorry I probably butchered that,
with the intent of vandalizing the couple's home, breaking into their garage and placing a tracker on their car.
This is wild s***.
This is not alleged.
All seven of them have since pleaded guilty and Buddy, the senior director of safety and security,
is facing five years in prison.
Imagine being the director of safety and security specifically.
This is some mafia level s*** right here.
Oh, this is crazy.
This is crazy.
Two other members of the eBay C-suite who were implicated in the matter were not charged,
including then-CEO David Wenig, who instructed eBay's then-chief communications officer,
Steven Weimer, to take Ina Steiner down after she criticized his outsized compensation.
Weimer then instructed, I don't know, Jim Bach, the director of safety and security guy,
instructed him that he wanted to see her burned down and to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
What?!
Our discussion question here is like, I don't even know what our discussion question-
How is it even only five years?
I would hear a story like that and go-
That's fake.
All right.
You know, grain of salt, right?
That's for a bad TV show.
That sounds exaggerated, you know.
And a lot of the time, an outlandish claim like that probably is exaggerated or even an outright fabrication.
But clearly, clearly, people are f***ing crazy.
Like, that is messed up s*** right there.
What are you doing?
What is wrong with you?
You know?
So it's pretty obvious that even if someone is making claims that seem just beyond what any reasonably functional human would do, right?
It's possible.
The fact that they pleaded guilty, right?
I mean, that's how this works, right?
Like, they're innocent until they're proven guilty.
Yeah.
Then you're like, stop, I did it.
Unless it's under, like, some form of duress or whatever, but I'm assuming that's not the case.
I mean, all seven of them, really?
Yeah.
Well, I mean-
I mean, it depends.
Did the prosecutors go to their houses, send them fetal pigs, put trackers on their cars?
Like, is that-
I've-
What the f***?
This isn't the gulags.
They probably were well-minded.
Like, I mean, you would kind of-
You would kind of-
Like, this is what I would expect from organized crime.
Ebay's not just some random-
It's not like-
Man, this was like-
Yeah, this was in, like, the early days of Ebay when they had some, like, weird people working there.
This was like four years ago!
What?!
You know, like, you hear these crazy stories about the, you know, the beginnings of the gaming industry or whatever, and it's like, yeah, there was cocaine everywhere, and it was-
Right?
This was four years ago!
Yeah.
2019!
Yeah.
How did they get caught?
I- I don't know, by mailing dead animals in the post, maybe? Like, which is a crime, for sure?
Yeah.
Like, I- it sounds- it sounds so improbable, that if it wasn't for the fines happening, and the- and the admissions of guilt, I still would say, you know, there's probably a bit more to this story, you know, it's a plea deal, or it's this, or it's that.
It makes you wonder, you know, the kind of just outlandish stuff that has gone on over the years, you know?
Pretty wild.
Oh, okay.
Uh, JChrist08 says, um, I forgive you for having the mark of the whatever, and if I recall correctly, they hired a PI who found out that it was Ebay because they were tailing them one day.
Oh!
Unreal.
Um, that was just a username, by the way, they weren't actually Jesus.
Unless they were, I mean, rose once, who's to say he couldn't rise again?
Okay, so this- all- all this kind of stuff broke in, like, 2021, but I- I'm assuming the- they- they got their settlement now?
I don't know.
There's, like, news articles about it.
Oh, it's that Ebay's paying the penalty, I think.
Yeah, so they're- they're getting their- yeah, that's wild.
Yeah, that's wild.
I- I just- I hadn't seen this.
Wow.
Unreal.
Wow.
Man, it's a good thing they weren't in Canada, because then having them tailed might have been, you know, violating their privacy.
Do you- do you see that wild thing?
How, uh, yeah, uh, Quebec police said, hey, you can't just, like, upload footage of porch pirates taking your stuff, because that could be a violation of their privacy, because they're innocent until proven guilty.
It's like, yeah, I guess they could have been just protecting that package from someone else, but like-
Wait.
Yeah, I know, right?
They're like, yeah, you need to report-
Doesn't Canada have, uh, filming on property laws?
Yeah, well, you can film it, but they're saying you can't just release it publicly, you should give it to the police.
Cool.
You know what?
F*** that.
F*** that.
That's stupid.
That is actual- that is actual clown- level stuff right there.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Yeah.
Speaking of very cool, should we do our announcement?
Do we have an announcement?
Yeah.
Oh.
Are you pregnant?
Yeah.
You don't look as pregnant as you did a while back.
That's good.
Dude, that early stage is something earlier.
He's doing really well, so I can, like, tease him now.
Luke's on a journey-
People in shadows, congrats!
Luke's glowing.
I'm going-
Alright, what is it?
Oh my goodness.
Is it something to do with this weird, like, letter thing that we both have?
No, I don't know what this is.
We could do this, though.
Okay, but no, let's do the announcement.
Let's do the announcement.
What's the announcement?
I have no idea what you're talking about.
The pants!
Oh, like merch?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
There's a section on the dock called announcements.
Oh.
Well, alright.
Okay, we have new lounge pants.
Yeah.
Available now at LTTstore.com.
They feature-
There we go.
The same comfy material as our underwear, so they're perfect for pajamas, hanging around,
around the house, or any situation where maximum comfort is your goal.
I'm just going to pull this up.
They're $34.99, available now on LTTstore.com.
And this came up in the pre-show.
If you have any questions regarding sizing, that's right, we have standard and long sizing!
Woo!
All you gotta do is check out the size guide.
We've got everything from XS all the way to XXXL.
And if you click the size guide, you can see not only the inseam lengths and sort of the heights
that they're designed for, but also how to measure these things to ensure that you will get an excellent fit.
Also, they're, you know, kind of stretchy, as you might expect.
I'm going to get a ton of use out of these.
Yeah.
We are also-
Pretty stoked about these.
Sorry?
Pretty stoked about these.
We're also giving a last chance here, reminder, to pick up our CES 2024 team t-shirt.
Sales end January 13th.
Yes.
This mainly came about because we've had a bunch of people complain in years past that we wore these shirts
in all of our coverage of CES that weren't freaking available on the site.
Yeah.
And so this time we were like, okay, fine.
Then if you want our cool team event coverage t-shirt, then fine, you can have one too.
All you have to do is pay for it.
So those are, those are going to be, these are a pre-sale.
All shirts will be printed following purchase.
And then we're going to ship them, here you go, by the end of this month.
Nice.
Okay.
This is, yeah, this is a digital reference only, but that's exactly what it looks like.
I'm excited about these because the onesie is made similarly, right?
Yep.
Yeah, that's also our underwear material.
And my, my girlfriend takes the onesie.
I don't, I'm not a huge fan of wearing onesies, but I find the material on that and this and
the underwear to be very comfortable, but I don't like, yeah, I don't like being in a onesie.
So having this for lounging at home will be great.
There's one last thing.
Uh, we have deals on remaining stock of WAN hoodies, short circuit hoodies, and Swackets.
We apparently found some additional inventory buried at the warehouse and they're 50 bucks
each until they're gone.
This is the last chance to grab any of these three items.
They will not be restocked.
Okay.
Um, so that was, what was that?
WAN hoodie, short circuit hoodie, and Swacket.
That's not to say we will never do another kind of similar style thing ever again.
But those ones.
But those ones will not be returning as far as we know.
Um, never say never, but it is almost certainly not going to happen.
We have what I believe is actually a legitimate question.
Uh, from Angeles zero zero zero.
Um, how much do these stealth sweatpants, uh, or new lounge pants show off package?
They're very soft material, so probably a decent amount.
I mean, I can put them on.
I don't think it's against Twitch's terms of service.
Okay, in all seriousness though, I mean, we've got, uh, we've got, you know, pictures on the
site of people wearing them, so.
Oh yeah, yeah, there you go.
I, I, if you're gonna wear them without underwear.
Then a lot.
Then a lot.
Then you're gonna have some, you're gonna have some meat print.
Yeah.
But these are, a bit of a looser, a bit of a looser, more relaxed fit.
So they're not gonna be super tight.
But, uh, I mean.
They're a soft pant.
If you would.
If she swings.
If you would show on a soft pant, you'll probably show in these.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which, you know.
What are you gonna do, apologize for it, I guess?
Yeah.
Anywho.
Ah, man.
This one, uh, this one I think is gonna make some people sad.
Let's go into it.
Um, Wacom and Wizards of the Coast admit to using AI art.
Um, you know.
It's not quite as bad as it sounds, I think.
Okay.
Wizards of the Coast first denied, then admitted that AI was used in the creation of a recent
promotional image for Magic of the Gathering.
Uh, the image showed telltale signs of artifacting associated with AI generation leading to uproar
among fans and artists.
According to a post from Magic of the Gathering's Twitter account, the art came from a vendor,
uh, who likely used AI features in an industry standard tool like Photoshop, leading to AI
artifacts in an image that was primarily created by a human being.
Wizards of the Coast promised not to use AI in their art back in December, following
similar backlash to an image in a Dungeons and Dragons source book, which used some amount
of AI generation.
The company now says they will apply similar standards to art for marketing materials.
Wacom, on the other hand, creators of the digital drawing tablets, faced similar questions
over an image in its own marketing materials.
A dragon with similar artifacts and nonsensical anatomical details.
The company has since apologized and stated that the art was purchased from a third party, and
uh, and it evaded its AI detection tools during the vetting process.
According to The Verge, the image likely came from a vendor who posted the art to Adobe
a stock without tagging it as AI.
Yeah, where's this tail coming from exactly?
Yeah, that's a, how did that, how did that dodge the AI detection stuff?
I mean, man, if I wasn't, if I was just glancing at it...
You won't notice immediately, but if they have a process for detecting AI stuff...
But like, if this is supposed to go up the dragon's spine, you know, why does it end up here?
Like, it's...
That too, yeah.
Like, yeah, it's, it's obviously AI now that we're looking at it.
Like, why would the tummy have scales and then have, like, like this, like, it's just...
What is, what is going on right now?
Yeah.
You know, but if we're not paying attention, if we're just reading this...
Yeah, there's like a dragon sitting there or whatever.
I...
I...
I get it.
Um...
Full Plane Chat is a very fun take on what's going on there.
Um...
Yeah.
Okay.
Moving on.
Is it, uh, tech layoffs time?
I guess.
This one, is this one only really pointing out...
Oh, this one's only pointing out a few.
Um...
But, uh, honestly, if we tried to point all of them out, we'd be here for an hour.
And we'd probably miss some, because probably more have happened since this was written.
So, it's probably fine.
I said probably a lot.
Uh, Twitch has announced the layoffs of around 35% of their staff.
Considering the 400 employees laid off from Twitch in March, this means the company has fired nearly half of its...
Original staff?
Um...
Of the staff that was around at that time.
Uh...
In a blog post, CEO Dan Clancy called the layoffs an attempt to right-size Twitch, which he says will still...
Uh...
Was still far bigger than it needs to be, despite ongoing sustainability efforts.
This is crazy.
Like, I think...
Is Twitch done?
Like, do you know the big new feature that they announced alongside NVIDIA, where, um, even smaller streamers can support multiple resolutions?
Oh, by them doing it themselves?
The transcription themselves?
By NVIDIA and streaming software companies working together to do all the encoding client-side, and then just...
Allow Twitch to ingest the various resolution streams.
I actually think it's pretty cool.
It is pretty cool, but...
Twitch talking about this as a feature...
Is like...
Okay.
I...
So I don't...
I don't...
I don't disagree with you, and I understand that this might be unpopular, but...
Uh...
The fact that...
I think it's like, over 99% of streamers on Twitch are getting effectively no viewers.
Like, three to zero.
Yeah.
Um...
It costs a lot for them to do all that, which is the reason why they haven't had access to transcoders this whole time.
I know.
So creating a method for them to get it is actually cool.
I understand people are upset about this, but...
The fact of the matter is, Twitch is not profitable, hasn't been for a long time.
Um...
They gotta do some stuff, you know?
Yeah, I get it.
And like, just expecting...
Expecting more money all the time, with them carrying more weight all the time, doesn't work when they never made money in the first place.
But that...
That last bit is...
The...
The fact that this whole thing is just obviously unsustainable.
Yeah.
So building new features basically amounts to figuring out how to offload more of your processing to your users.
It's like, okay.
Yeah, good luck everybody.
So I...
I agree.
It's super cool.
And honestly, if we could support it on Floatplane, I'm sure we would.
That'd be sweet.
Yeah, it'd be awesome.
Like, if you could just use, you know, OBS and encode at 240p, 360p...
We totally could.
...480p, 720p, 1080p, and...
Oh, for streaming.
Yeah, for streaming.
Oh, no, no, no.
I was thinking VOD for a second.
Yeah, no, but if your car...
And this is basically NVIDIA, like, unlocking functionality that already existed on their professional cards.
It's just more NVENC streams.
Hey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We totally support it.
I would like them to just unlock all of them because...
Another nice thing...
They're all on there.
...because they're all on there.
Yeah.
Frustration, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's Twitch.
Google laid off about 1,000 people.
Discord laid off 170 people, also about 17% of its staff.
And the laundry list of companies just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
Tech and gaming just got ravaged.
You mentioned...
They haven't stopped getting ravaged since basically the...
I don't know what, sort of the kind of the end of the lockdown period, essentially.
Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned...
Game Engine.
Unity.
Unity, yeah.
Unity got hit really hard.
Is it really Unity if all the people are scattered to the high winds?
Oof.
Hey, got them.
Unity layoffs got 25% of their staff.
Yeah, it's rough.
There's a huge list of companies that are taking, like, 10 to 25% staff hits.
I was talking in the executive staff meeting a few weeks ago about how, like, we need to change
our messaging internally a little bit to be reflective of how hungry we're gonna need to be this year.
It's...
It's hard out there.
Hard out there.
And so, you know, everyone's gonna be...
Economy's rough.
Money's not really flowing like it normally does.
Yep.
So, you know, if we want...
If we want to be sustainable...
We want to not do layoffs.
We have to understand that we need to work harder for every view.
We need to work harder for every screwdriver sale.
We need to...
We need to...
We gotta get hungry.
Um...
And I think that's...
That's probably something that Taren will craft into sort of a more...
Wow.
Uh...
A more comprehensive message and kinda...
Kinda work with everyone on and get the...
You know, all the managers to work with their teams on.
It's time to pump.
Like, figure out what we need to do.
Oof.
Oof.
We've weathered storms before, but it's...
Yeah, it's time to get up the way.
Not like this.
This is starting to look really bad.
Yes.
Between the way that money's not flowing freely anymore, with interest rates being what they
are, with the way that...
You know, it's a funny thing.
Like, you know, oh, inflation's like, you know, not bad anymore.
It's like, right, but all the inflation that like happened, it didn't go away.
Like, everything is still more expensive.
Yeah.
So, I mean, did your hourly wage go up to match it before?
Okay, so then this problem hasn't gone away at all, just because inflation's leveling out.
That's like, actually not how that works.
Um...
It's...
It looks...
rough.
So...
Out there.
Handyman, um, as he tends to be, was handy again with yet another link.
Um...
Layoffs.fyi.
I've heard of this site.
Uh...
I think I clicked on it as like a middle click mouse wheel into another tab at home, but
never actually ended up looking at it.
You can filter it.
So click the drop-down to 2024.
Yeah.
5,686 employees from 37 companies laid off this year!
It's been 12 days!
We're 12 days in!
We're not even two weeks in!
Sheesh, dude.
Google is a fifth of them almost.
A thousand.
Twitch.
There's Twitch.
Okay, I have no idea what branch is, but I'm sure it's something.
There's a fair amount of these I haven't personally heard of.
Oh, this is cool.
Yeah, you can filter by industry.
All right.
Rough.
Etsy laid off a bunch of people.
11%.
Intel?
311?
I don't know what Intel...
Tidal!
Tidal laid off 10% of their workforce.
Rivian lost some.
Cruise, 24%.
Spotify 1500.
I forgot about that one.
Oh, here.
Hold on.
Why am I...
Sort by this...
Oh, what?
Oh, man.
Yeah, I guessed and I did the wrong one.
Spotify 1500.
That's...
Wow.
VMware?
2837?
No, this is every year now.
Um...
Wow.
Rough.
Uh...
Uh...
And in other bad news, Valve has cracked down on a couple of fan projects recently.
Uh...
They asked the developer of Portal 64, a demake of Portal, playable on the Nintendo 64, to
delist the project on GitHub, likely to avoid legal action from Nintendo.
And the company likewise served GitHub with a DMCA takedown for Team Fortress Source 2, a
project aiming to port TF2 to the Source 2 engine.
Uh...
Valve explicitly allows the creation and distribution of games based on its IPs in the Steam subscriber
agreement, including games like Black Mesa, which can be purchased on Steam.
But, notably, the creator of Black Mesa received explicit approval from Valve.
Gary Neumann, creator of Gary's Mod, speculated that Valve may have taken action simply because
the game wasn't derivative, but a full copy of their existing game, including all of their assets.
Um...
Discussion question here is, is Valve right in enforcing a certain boundary around their IP?
Is this a fair line to draw?
I mean, I do think it's... it is reasonable.
It's just more that Valve has always been very permissive, and so this may be coming as a
bit of a surprise to these folks.
And it's a little frustrating that, given that I've been aware of at least Portal 64 for quite
some time, that they didn't say something earlier on in the process.
That's kind of all I really have to say about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh...
Uh...
Video games, no longer the biggest entertainment medium in Britain.
Okay, you... you thought this one was really interesting, for some reason.
I just...
Video games have been the biggest entertainment medium for a long time, and I think...
Being on the top is actually pretty important in regards to, you know, gaining eyeballs, interest,
affordance, all that type of stuff.
Um, so...
Affordance?
Isn't that a thing?
I love your words.
Isn't that a thing?
Affordability, I think, is what you're looking for.
Affordance.
The quality or property of an object that defines its possible uses, or makes clear how
it can or should be used.
Okay, so it's a word.
That I used very improperly.
But...
In 2023...
I think you mean un-properly.
Oh no.
Uh...
In 2023, video games were surpassed for the first time in over a decade as the UK's biggest
entertainment medium in terms of revenue.
Games are still growing as an industry, increasing year over year by 2.9%.
Uh...
I wonder what the population is increasing by.
I suspect it's similar or even higher.
However, video game content grew far faster at 10% compared to 2022.
Huh?
Oh, driven primarily by streaming.
NACON's, whatever that is, head of publishing, recently theorized that part of gaming's recent
struggles is due to a boom in the sheer volume of new titles as a result of overinvestment
during the 2020 pandemic.
He further stated that there's simply too many games for customers to be able to play.
Steam saw a record total of over 14,000 game releases in 2023, though that was in part
pushed by amateur game devs.
It is every year, though.
Um...
It's also partially in part of, like, uh...
Just AI dialogue games that were just crapped out.
Um...
Yeah.
Kind of...
Kind of a rough one.
What I'm missing in the notes here, and I didn't see in the Rock Paper Shotgun article,
and I'm gonna check the gamesindustry.biz one, is...
Uh...
What is now the number one?
What is number one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um...
I don't actually...
I don't see that.
Uh...
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, yeah, no, I don't...
I don't see it.
So maybe...
Maybe someone knows.
Like, music...
Um...
Movies...
Video streaming...
Like, I...
I...
I don't actually know, but hopefully someone can let us know that.
Um...
In other news...
Framework...
Has been hacksored!
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Framework has disclosed...
And I need to disclose my investor thing.
I...
I didn't have it in the stupid Asus sponsored CES videos.
Uh-oh.
I forgot.
Uh-oh.
I'm sorry.
I'm still...
I'm still...
I'm still invested in Framework.
Framework has disclosed a data breach following a phishing attack against a third-party accountant
working for Keating Consulting.
The attacker used an email impersonating Framework's CEO to convince the accountant to share a sensitive spreadsheet
associated with outstanding balances for Framework purchases.
Framework has already notified customers whose personal information was leaked, including full name, email, and the balance owed.
The company reportedly became aware of the breach yesterday morning, roughly half an hour after it happened.
Framework says that Keating Consulting employees with access to Framework customer information will be required to complete phishing and social engineering attack training.
Uh...
Discussion question says, disclosure, disclosure, disclosure.
Are you confident in the way Framework dealt with this issue?
Uh...
I...
I'm gonna...
I'm just gonna recuse myself.
So, we'll have, um...
Dan and Luke discuss it while I go to the bathroom.
Laptop.
Uh...
Uh...
Computer...
Information leak.
Don't do that!
It's bad!
Bad!
Stock price.
Really, you guys?
That's the best you can do?
Well, uh...
Our boss owns...
Some of it.
I don't know what to say.
Oh my god!
Uh...
Discussion question.
Is Linus an idiot?
What?
Is that on there?
No.
That'd be sick if it was.
Um...
I don't think it could happen to anybody, right?
Yes.
That's kind of my take on this is, uh...
We...
Like, we as a...
As a company, whenever we do web entity stuff, the forum, float plane, everything else we've
done, we're taking this idea forward at the labs website, we try to take and retain
as little of your stuff as possible while still being able to do the things that we need
to do, which does involve taking some of your stuff when it comes to information.
Uh...
We need to be able to, you know, um...
Figure out if we're serving you video properly.
Uh...
We need to know some of your account details so that you can, like, recover your account
if you need to and have your own personal account and those various different types
of things.
Um...
But...
Watch history for, like, a service of how...
How much...
How long did you watch this video for?
I know that's very popular on YouTube and stuff like that, too.
Yep.
We've got that as well.
Um...
Like, we...
We capture that type of data.
Um...
But...
It...
Not only is it possible that this type of thing could happen to us, it did.
Quite a while ago, uh...
Some of the forum information...
We don't know how much.
We think a very small amount, but we don't actually know.
So we just told everybody.
Um...
But some of the forum information was...
Was broken into.
Was hackzord.
Um...
And...
Yeah.
Also on the forum.
We tried to...
Have as little of it as possible that you didn't want to be there.
Um...
Like, there was...
Uh...
There was things that were highly elective.
You know?
Um...
Like, you could...
But those were public on your profile, so I don't think it really counts.
Anyways...
Um...
This also doesn't look like it's...
Uh...
Negligence.
You know?
They had a...
No.
They had a spreadsheet that was...
I guess had lists of names.
Like, did it have their credit card information on the spreadsheet?
No.
Balance owed...
Right?
It's just personal information, right?
Uh...
I mean, we've seen lots of other hacks and things like that where they get a hell of a lot more information.
Plain text, passwords, whatever else.
Plain text, passwords, emails, addresses.
Yeah.
This is just names and money?
I think?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was a proper phishing attack, again.
Like...
Like, when you look at...
Uh...
We just looked at a website that was...
Um...
Right off.
But there's Have I Been Pwned.
That's a classic.
Yeah.
Um...
Have I Been Pwned is still around.
I'm jumping it up right now.
Uh...
740 pwned websites with...
100,000...
What is it?
12 billion pwned accounts.
This stuff happens all the time.
Um...
The...
Jumping on here and seeing the like...
Yeah.
Recently added breaches.
Uh...
Hathaway.
Uh...
Legandas.
I don't know what that is.
There's a lot of users there.
Um...
You guys know you're the absolute worst, right?
This stuff happens constantly.
Why?
Uh...
Throw your chips across the room.
You mean guy.
We did our best!
Uh...
I think we did good once you left.
Oh...
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, just...
Immediately, uh...
Immediately serious.
Snapped and do it after you left the room.
Yeah.
We can't be showing you up here, Linus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, we...
Like, it...
I don't know.
Uh...
I'm not saying...
It's definitely not a good thing.
But like, at this point in time, if you're putting information...
At any point in time, really.
But if you're putting information on the internet, um...
You should know that there is a chance that that information can get hacked, leaked, etc.
Um...
And...
Be prepared for the inevitable eventuality of it happening to some site that you have that information on.
You don't necessarily know which one it's gonna be.
You don't know how.
You don't know why.
You don't know if you'll be included in the pile of accounts that do actually get, um...
Some amount of data taken from them, whatever.
Um...
It's like, it's going to happen.
Um...
I like that they disclosed it right away.
So try to protect yourself as much as you can.
That is very good.
Um...
Yep.
Early, quick disclosure is very important in these situations because users, as much as
everyone tells them not to, they're gonna have the same password across different platforms.
So if the password is leaked, which it doesn't sound like it was in this case, but if a password
is leaked, they need to be able to respond very quickly and change that.
If other sensitive information is leaked, um...
Payment information, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it's good for them to know.
If even just their name or something like that is leaked, maybe, I don't think having
association with framework is gonna be a problem, but maybe having association with
whatever service that is, uh, could be bad for them for some reason.
I don't know.
KAC Herp J1 says, learned my lesson from the Ashley Madison breach.
So that's an example of what you were just talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Association with the service.
But just in general, you don't necessarily know why it might be important to your users,
so don't mess around with it.
Tell them as soon as you can.
Um...
Is Ashley Madison still a thing?
I have no idea.
Apparently it is.
Yes.
Life is short, have an affair.
Even after all that.
They even still have the same tagline.
Why change it?
The original extramarital dating site.
50 million members.
There's no way those are all real.
Yeah.
Some time fraction of those gonna be real.
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
Uh, it sucks, but...
It's funny because extramarital sounds like, like, super...
Extremely marital.
Extremely marital.
Yeah.
I am in a hyper-marital relationship.
Who knew that inflammable meant flammable?
You know?
Jeez.
Jeez.
Yeah.
So...
I think that's all there is to say on that.
Um...
Are we done?
Should we do more of these?
Or should we just jump into...
After Dark?
We can do more of these.
There's some more.
I want to talk about LG's washing machine.
Oh, yeah.
Where's that?
Very bottom.
I want you to read this one because it's gonna be fun.
I know this one, actually.
Aww.
That's a shame.
Yeah.
I was definitely keeping up with this one.
Um, an LG washing machine user recently found that his appliance was using 3.6 gigabytes
a day.
He joked that it was a download DLC, downloadable laundry cycles.
Very funny.
Uh, but also found that he couldn't disconnect the machine from the internet.
Only switch it to a different wifi signal.
Eventually, he blocked the machine via his router.
Uh...
Amazing.
So this isn't like...
It grabbed a big update.
No.
This is...
Continuous...
Yeah.
Encrypted...
Something.
Something.
What...
The...
F***?
No idea.
But it's amazing.
Someone found that it matched, uh...
I think it was, like, Yvonne Line's uptime or something.
Um...
Which, like...
I mean, I can't look through the Twitter thread because I'm not signed in and the site basically
doesn't work anymore if you're not signed in.
Um...
But yeah, people were trying to, like, kind of theorize what it was doing with obviously basically
no information and it was very funny that it basically followed Yvonne Line's uptime,
but, like, I seriously doubt that means anything.
Um...
But...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just having a ton of junk in your house on the internet is not great.
Ugh.
You know what's great?
Land Show After Dark.
Yeah.
I'll do it.
8%.
I waited for him to move a bit first.
It's 8%.
I know it's 8%.
Ah! I fell!
See, Luke? This is why we don't have to document anything.
Cause we all just know.
That's how it works, right?
I didn't know.
Yeah, but Luke knew.
Yeah, but Luke won't always be here.
Because I'm gonna be the one to win the streak.
I don't know about that.
Yeah, it's gonna be...
It's gonna be me.
I'm gonna win.
I think that's gonna happen.
I mean, I moved a flight for this.
I have moved multiple flights and multiple vacations for this.
I have taken...
Three WAN shows in 2023 were while I was on vacation, and I did it anyways!
As of yesterday, I've made it even more to do this remotely, so...
Now there's no excuse.
I don't know if anyone's winning.
I think this is just a forever war.
Yeah, we've already accounted for me to be on WAN show during my trip to Japan.
Good, that's required.
It's mandatory.
Yeah.
We now will have both been in Japan and doing WAN shows.
So there you go.
Yeah.
The latency is really bad.
Yeah, the latency is pretty rough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, Dan.
Hit me.
All right, let's see what we got.
Hey, Dale.
It was awesome being able to chat with Matt from Procurement on the CES show floor.
Obviously, there was a ton of AI products this year, but what stood out to you that didn't lean on AI?
There was a whole section about that?
Yeah, we kind of talked about this earlier in the show.
I mean...
Notable non-AI demos.
If we made a video about it, it stood out to us.
I watched Adam's video on these cool flip-back VR controllers.
So cool.
So it frees up your hands to do stuff, and then you just flip them back and...
Oh.
Yeah, right?
Oh.
Yeah, I wasn't that into every...
If they get the haptics of that...
Is haptics a right term?
The...
No, it's not, but I understand what you mean.
The...
Ergonomics?
The feel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I feel like there's a better...
Probably.
I don't know.
If they get that right, that could feel amazing.
Mm-hmm.
Tactility says awkward chips.
That's not bad.
Um, so that...
That was pretty cool.
Um, I wasn't that into some of their accessories.
They have a little, like, mouth cone with a little spit absorber so that you can be less
loud when you're in, like, VR chat.
I don't know.
I mean, if you have a roommate that you're bothering or whatever, I guess, but...
I don't know.
I just...
Hmm.
Okay.
I don't think I need the spit-collecting mouth cone, please.
Yeah.
I think I'll avoid that one.
I think I'll pass on that one, too.
Oh, man.
Oh, man.
Hello, Danny and the Jets.
I was recently out to dinner with co-workers at a sports lounge slash bar, and they had
a Super Chex.
Hi!
Didn't get a chance to play, but it looked amazing.
Yeah.
Which model do you have, Linus?
I have a Super Chex from the 90s.
So not a Super Chex Pro and not an original Chex.
It's a Super Chex.
Hi, wanfam.dll.
Linus spoke a few weeks ago of a badminton racket gift that happened to land based on preferences.
What are your racket specs, and how do you get high-end rackets in Canada?
I have a strong preference for head-heavy overall light rackets.
So they're heavier at the head end versus the bottom.
And that's a little bit better for attack.
It's a little bit better for generating power when you're driving or smashing.
Not that kind.
Badminton rackets are not involved in that.
And as for the overall lightness, I find it helps with defense.
Just to be able to move the head faster in order to hit the shots back over.
So it was an Astrox 99, was the one that I quite liked.
And then I...
Right now I'm actually a Nanoflare 700 guy.
So I have a handful of those that I keep strung up.
I forget what the rest of your question was.
Oh, I don't know, YUMO Pro Shop.
They're local, but they also have a web shop.
They're shipping super expensive because they ship in Canada.
So, I mean, I get it.
It's just how it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's hard to get down to Richmond when they're open though.
So I tend to have to order from them online.
Does the Canadian government subsidize shipping?
No.
Yeah, a lot of governments do, actually.
People are chanting envelopes.
Oh, right! Envelopes!
Yes.
I have no idea what this is.
Yeah, I guess we'll open them.
They're from Origin PC.
Yeah.
And they look kind of holiday-y.
And they're sitting on the WAN show set.
I have no context for this whatsoever.
I think they're Christmas cards and they just showed up late.
That's my theory.
I have no idea.
Happy holidays from Origin PC.
Oh, wow.
They didn't even write anything on them.
Okay.
Sick.
Thanks, guys.
Now we know what was in them.
Go ahead, Dan.
Hey guys, Linus, my big screen VR headset has finally got a label and is ready to ship.
How has your headset held up so far?
Any dead pixels or such?
No.
Oh, shoot.
That reminded me of something for a previous merch message.
They were asking about cool stuff that wasn't AI.
Micro OLED displays that used, like, silicon deposition rather than inkjet printing to achieve crazy densities.
I'm talking 3,500 pixels per inch.
Crazy bright.
There's this company, Imagine.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Imagine Samsung Acquisition.
Samsung acquired them.
They were in the...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Imagine.
They acquired them for around $218 million.
And, oh, man.
So they had a 10,000 nit micro, I believe, OLED.
I believe it was micro OLED display.
That one didn't have the same density because it was done using the older, like, printed style of manufacturing.
But these new, like, deposition ones, they're not as bright yet, but they're saying they'll have, like, a fifth of the power consumption.
And once they can get the brightness up, man, these things are going to be flipping crazy for AR and VR displays and stuff like that.
I'm very excited.
Yeah, that's wicked.
Because, like, that level of pixels per inch, like, I am not going to care in most scenarios.
But when it's strapped right in front of my face, yeah, for sure.
Okay.
LMG Southie in the chat says, oops, maybe shouldn't have left those on Wandset.
Lol.
Who is LMG Southie?
Southie.
I'm assuming the guy that works at the door.
Southie?
What is that?
Oh, is this just, is it a handle?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Alrighty.
Go ahead, Dan.
Uh, yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Hello, Luke, Dan, and Tech Tips Man.
My favorite part of LTX 2023 was the live WAN show.
With the LAN center coming, does that mean we may get some more live WAN shows in the future?
With how close it is, I feel like we would just do WAN here in the drive over.
Yeah.
Not to be that guy, sorry.
But it's honestly way easier.
We'd save a lot of Dan's time.
Oh my god, you would.
Yeah.
Oh my god.
Yeah, in, in...
And less stress for me.
In my opinion, in the, uh, in the sake of saving an enormous amount of time, and honestly,
for the people that aren't there, probably making the show better, we would just do it here
and then drive over after.
I could put it up on a projector, though.
Maybe.
I mean, maybe, but people are probably also just gonna want to game and, uh, yeah.
I don't know.
You're out of LAN.
You should be gaming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hi, WAN.dll.
Bought a 5950x to upgrade my AM4 to make it a home server.
Only to find out AM4 lacks support for Windows Server.
As AMD devil's advocate, can you make up a reason that, other than just go to buy Epic?
No.
Um, I actually didn't know that.
Is that on Microsoft, or is that on AMD?
Probably AMD, I would think.
Um.
I know that server has very specialized qualifications for drivers and things like that, right?
Yeah, sort of.
Um, like, a lot of stuff will just run if you can convince it to install.
Um, like, there used to be, uh, like, like files that you could just add new versions
of Windows to, and it would just install and, like, probably work perfectly.
Um, I, uh, are you sure that you can't just force and install?
People are saying they didn't know that in chat.
Um.
Win 10 and 11 drivers will work fine 99% of the time.
People are saying, like, yeah, if you just, if you just run, if you just run the Windows
10 and Windows 11 installer, will it just work?
Because that was my experience the vast majority of the time.
Okay.
Hey, Dynas, Duke, and Lan, I am running for U.S. House of Representatives in 2026.
We need more tech-literate people in government.
See TikTok hearings.
If you could make or repeal any laws, what would you guys do?
Oh, man.
I thought this one might be interesting.
One issue is-
I'm scared.
So-
Yes.
We don't really-
I would definitely, I would definitely start to look at liability for personal information
sharing.
Like, it should, it should-
Yeah.
If you did it on purpose, it should basically be the end of your company, if you said you
wouldn't.
Um, like, you, I just, I don't really, um, I don't really understand why it's just this
constant game of, you know, wrist slap and go back to doing it.
Wrist slap, go back to doing it.
Yeah.
Um, I'm also, I'm also super not into the uneven handling of antitrust in the U.S.
Yes.
Like, the way they went after Microsoft and then just-
Didn't go after other people?
Sat on ass for 30 years, 25 years, or whatever it works out to, just has made no sense to
me.
Um.
Not that them going after Microsoft was necessarily bad or wrong.
Yeah.
But, if you were going to do that, you should have treated the other companies the same
way.
Hi, LLD, question for Linus.
I'm a new dad, the son is four months old.
That's not really a question.
Do you have any advice on how to juggle being a father, husband, and working?
It gets very overwhelming some days.
Thanks for the videos.
Strap in, baby.
Um, I mean, it gets easier.
Uh, the first six months is, from what I've seen so far, the hardest, at least until you get
to teenage years, which I've heard are very challenging, but I'm not there yet.
Um, just that level of dependency is, is really, really tough.
I'd say, I'd say the biggest thing is, um, be consistent, set expectations.
Um, set expectations with, you know, the kids.
Um, if you say you're going to do something, do it.
And, you know, be realistic.
If you're not able to do something, you know, be upfront.
Um, if you say that something needs to be done, then hold to it until it is done because
otherwise it's just going to be a fight every time.
And, you know, it's the, it's the same with the spouse.
You've got to negotiate.
You've got to, you've got to compromise.
And it's the same with work.
You've got to set expectations.
Like, look, I, I can't, I can't be there.
Uh, and if, if the answer is, you know, well then you're not going to be eligible for
this promotion, then you need to set expectations with yourself and understand that you have a balanced
life that is not going to be 100% focused on career.
And that's, that's the choice you made.
And by the way, it's worth it.
Hey, LLD, as a recent purchaser of a Chevy Volt, I feel like the car is way ahead of its time.
What's your favorite piece of tech that felt ahead of its time and held that feeling long after release?
The Chevy Volt.
Easy.
Hey, LLD, how's, um, God, okay.
That is usually his example to that question.
It's its only example.
It is fair.
It's great.
It's his, it's the best example.
Yeah, yeah.
That car is like five, six years old, the one that I was driving.
I would still choose it over the vast majority of what's sitting on the lot today.
If I was shopping for a car, it's probably what I would get.
Hey, LLD, how, uh, how does Mac address do in terms of value to LMG and the ability to cover Apple products given your relationship with them?
I think, I think so.
Like basically, does having Mac address get you more access to Apple products?
No.
Um, I think that, I think they might've gotten an email or something at some point, maybe gotten on a call at some point.
I, I'm, I'm not that involved in the relationship management side with Apple.
Cause that would be a terrible idea.
Sorry, I snorted.
Um, yeah.
Oh, sorry.
Uh, Dan, it's helpful if you leave the one we're talking about up and don't archive it yet.
I thought I did.
Oh, I don't see it.
No, it's archived.
Someone archived it.
I didn't.
Oh, all right.
Must've been me.
Normally, normally I leave them up.
Anyway.
Yeah.
I like to refer back down to them.
No, you're good.
You're good.
No, no, no, no.
I'm looking at it now.
Um, how feel the Mac address channel doing in terms of, in terms of value to LMG.
I mean, I, I think it's been a really interesting, um, study case study for us, you know, can we build a channel that isn't just covering PC tech with a slightly different face from a different perspective with, you know, kind of a different spin.
Um, and okay.
Yeah.
Macs are personal computers as well, but, uh, I think it's, I think it's got a really unique identity.
Um, and I think that there's a lot that we have learned.
There's a lot that has gone really right.
Um, there's also a lot that's gone wrong.
You know, it's not, uh, I think you might've noticed, you know, the, the release schedule is a little bit erratic.
Um, and that's, there's no single point that we can, that we can look at and go, okay, well, you know, here's, here's the problem.
Um, so there's a lot that's good.
There's a lot that's not as good.
There's a lot we've learned and no, I, I, it hasn't helped my personal relationship with, you know, anyone at Apple.
That's for sure.
Hey DLL with a baby on the way in March, any tech advice for a new parent?
Maybe the best thing you had for your kids when they were infants.
Just a basic baby monitor was all we needed.
We didn't go video or anything like that.
I, I wanted to mention kind of the baby monitor thing.
Uh, don't, don't, don't, just don't get an internet connected one.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's go with that.
I wanna, I wanna say get the lizard, but I don't think that would be safe.
The lizard.
Baby monitor.
Baby monitor.
As in, as in a monitor lizard.
Hi guy.
Hi.
That face.
Please don't kill me.
Uh, LTD must guard its competitive edge, but I, but would Linus ever host classes or content on its guidelines or lessons learned for writing, uh, people management or workflows?
Tech adjacent tips always interested me.
The WAN show?
I mean, I'm an open book guys.
You can, you can ask me anything in a merch message and assuming you, you know, buy enough
stuff, then I'll, no, no, it's not how it works actually.
But, um, I, I, I don't consider that to be a competitive edge guarding thing.
You know, I've always taken a very similar approach to MrBeast where my advice might not be as good as his, you know, he's clearly been more successful than I have in terms of attracting eyeballs to his content.
Um, but I, I, I'm open with it.
If anyone asks me anything, I'm always happy to give the best answer I can.
Sometimes people ask questions that I can't answer.
Like, Hey Linus, how do I stand out?
I'm like, I don't know.
Yeah.
How do you stand out?
Yeah.
There is, there is limitations to the format as there is with pretty much every format.
But, um, I, I, we talk lots about sort of business philosophy, which, um, you know, sometimes does great for us.
And other times I feel like bites us in the butt.
Uh, like I think our, I've talked a lot about how I think our, our overall approach to transparency ends up harming us more than it helps us.
Yep.
We're not going to change though.
I, it's just, it's, it's part of the DNA like it or not.
Um, as for like writing and workflows, like I, I actually, I shared a little while ago our, our, uh, laws of writing good videos.
Like that's, that's it.
That's, that's what we do.
You can, that's a formula that you can take and you can apply for sure.
I don't remember which WAN show it was in, but there's that site that you can search WAN show transcripts or something like that.
So you could probably, you could probably find it.
Um, Colton's been wanting me to do a course, like a, like a formal course forever.
We wouldn't even have to publish it on a third party site like Skillshare or whatever.
We could just publish it on float plane, but I just, um, I haven't gotten around to it.
And a big part of that is I just, I don't know.
I feel like if people really want to know that, like I'll, I'll tell you, just, I don't know, ask me and we'll, we'll get it sorted.
We'll get it sorted.
We'll get it sorted.
Hi, WAN dot DLL.
Um, hold on.
This is the same one as before.
At conventions like CES, is it difficult to deal with people coming up to you?
Um, it's mostly.
Mostly.
Can be.
Kind of depends on timing.
And I find personally.
Yeah.
It's mostly like context.
I think that, uh, no disrespect intended, but a lot of the time, um, you know, the tech community
is my people and sometimes we are not always the most socially aware.
Um, like, okay, okay.
This is great.
Uh, this video is not up yet, but there's, um, our, our video on back to front motherboards
in the Corsair suite.
Der Bauer showed up and started recording a bit where like, obviously I was going to be
in his video and it took me a full, probably five minutes before, after I had like appeared
in his thing to realize that I should probably invite him to be in ours that I was in the middle
of shooting, not because I meant any disrespect or because I didn't want him in the video.
Focused.
I just hyperfocus, right?
Like I do.
So I, I, so I realized before he left and I, and I, uh, and I like kind of quickly came
up with a way that even though my content was scripted, I had spent the first couple of hours
in the suite researching, writing and, um, and throwing it on the teleprompter.
So it's all written by me, but it's scripted.
And I kind of figured out a spot where I could throw in sort of a natural looking, uh, conversation
with him.
And, uh, fortunately I caught him before, before he left, but he could have easily left.
And I would have just rudely not reciprocated again, not because we're not cordial or not
because I didn't want him in the video, just because I was completely oblivious.
And I can, I find that sometimes my peeps can be a little oblivious.
If I'm walking briskly, no, I don't have a lot of time.
Um, and it's, you know, if you can, if you can, if you can walk and selfie, you know, cool.
Yeah.
Let's let, let's do it.
Let's do it, brother.
But like, um, you know, don't, don't try and do a product demo for me.
Like it's, it's cues like that, that, you know, or if, if the conversation seems over,
you know, like you're not saying anything anymore.
And I said, you know, have a great CES.
Take off.
You know, I'm not, you know, mad or anything.
It's just, and I get it.
It's just, it can be a really high nerves moment.
Yeah.
It can be a lot to deal with.
Um, but yeah.
So yeah, it's fine.
Um, like I, you know, if I didn't, if I didn't like the attention, it's not like I couldn't
just not go to conventions.
It's not like I couldn't just not do this career anymore.
Like, obviously it's all right.
Like I, you know, I like seeing the community out there.
I'm sure at your channel size, you could request that booths are like vacated while
you're there.
Oh, absolutely.
Um, I'm sure that you could move more incognito.
I tell people not to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like they'll, they'll ask like, do you want everything roped off?
I'm like, no, I don't want things roped off.
I want it to look like I'm at a fricking trade show.
I'm at a trade show.
Am I not?
Yeah.
I still have enough of a clue to not walk up in the middle of a rolling camera.
It still happens.
It does happen.
Yeah.
I even had people say like, I know you're in the middle of a shot, but I just wanted
to say hi.
And I was like, cool.
Like if you're another creator and we have some kind of an existing relationship, by all
means.
Had that happen and it was good as well.
And I've done that to other people.
In fact, I popped into Roby Tech's video, which he might have cut out because I made
some comment about Epstein's flight list or something.
I'm not sure.
Poor Roby, dude.
Why?
Why are you like this?
Oh yeah, you come do it to us, but if I see you.
I forget why.
It was like, oh man, what was the logic?
It was like, well, now that you're associated with me, you're going to get dragged down
into my chasm of cancellation.
It was something like that.
Yeah, that's rough.
It's great.
Yeah, Roby, he's great.
I support you.
Anywho.
Let's see.
Get that one out of the way.
I have been an electrical engineer for over a year now, but I'm not sure I actually enjoy
engineering, particularly for a company that's just trying to drive profits.
Any advice?
Don't work for a company then, because that's what they do.
Yeah, so I...
If they're not profitable, they don't exist.
And if they don't exist, your job doesn't exist.
So I was going to plan on being a little bit nicer about it, but effectively get the
exact same message through.
Or do your own thing.
And you might not have the capital right now.
You know, you can start small.
You can start on the side.
You know, build a company that runs the way you want it to run.
But those are your only options.
You can work for someone else and kind of deal with some of their bullshit.
Or you can take your ball and go home.
The company has to make profit or else they won't be able to pay you.
But you might also be able to look around and find another company who's like mission statement
or drive or whatever better aligns with things that make your soul happy or whatever.
Absolutely.
Find a mission that speaks to you.
Yeah.
So like if you're working at a company that's like, yeah, we don't care.
It's just money.
We just want money, which there's a bunch of those.
And you might like that.
But if you're working at a company like that.
We would harvest the fingernails from babies if they made our cars go faster.
You know, like there's companies like that.
There are legit.
That sounds like an exaggeration, but there's companies like that.
Nothing would surprise me after that eBay thing.
Oh, there's way worse though.
Yeah.
Anyways, but you might be able to look around.
You might have to take a little bit less money because companies doing that are very likely,
you know, I mean, they're not hunting profits as hard.
So they're very likely doing things that are less profitable.
Therefore, they very likely have less money.
But if you can accept the hidden cash, you might be able to work somewhere that.
Mr. Worldwide asks, is making a company really practical as an electrical engineer?
Well, it depends what kind of scale you're trying to operate on.
I mean, absolutely.
We bought, they might have sent them, but they sell them for sure to other people.
But we got these really cool custom PCIe Gen 4 risers.
I think they were.
Were they Gen 5 compatible?
I don't know.
They were really cool.
Basically, there's like a guy who makes these PCI Express extenders that we used in our 1U
gaming systems for the LAN center.
We called them out in the video.
But as far as we can tell, it's a guy who designs these things and sells them.
Probably an electrical engineer or electronics engineer, which I actually did not know was
a different thing until probably like six years ago, five or six years ago when I started
playing badminton with an electronics engineer who got upset when I introduced her to someone
else as an electrical engineer.
She's like, um, actually.
And I was like, oh, my deepest, most sincere apologies.
I thought they were just like different sides of the same coin.
I thought it was the same overarching term.
I feel like she probably gets that a lot.
Yeah, probably.
Because I bet you most people think they're the same thing.
Well, she runs a pet store now, so I don't even know what her issue is.
It's like you don't even do any electronics engineering.
I still earned this.
I mean, one of my family members is a fully qualified lawyer passing the bar and everything.
He realized, I don't like being a lawyer, and now he plays billiards professionally, poker,
and he sells jet skis.
So, like, weird, weird man.
He's like bar passing everything, fully qualified lawyer.
He's like, I want to play poker.
So it'd be you.
That's fantastic.
Smart people tend to find ways to do stuff.
It's been very successful, yeah.
But, yeah, anyways, you're going to be somewhere that cares about profit,
or you're going to be working at a non-profit.
And some not-for-profits are still pretty money-ungry.
Or extremely profit-focused.
Corrupt.
Just in a different way.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Maybe start shopping for another job.
It might be more based around the place that you're currently working instead of the career.
Make sure it's more based.
Yeah.
Alright.
Has any megacorp, like Microsoft, with the recent login issue,
ever responded to you chastising them on camera for annoying long-term?
Yes.
Yeah?
Oh, yeah.
Including Microsoft.
Including Microsoft.
But, I would say Microsoft's response was pretty good every time I saw it.
I don't think they've actually fixed the modern standby thing, though.
Oh.
Well, that sucks.
Yeah, there's that.
As for that login issue in the recent short circuit, man, it's freaking hilarious.
That stupid loop login issue on Halo Infinite.
If you're trying to switch accounts, it'll be like, I don't know the password.
Forgot password.
Can't do that.
Switch accounts and it'll just loop around you.
I can't get out of it unless you can log into that account or you go delete some stupid, like, credential.
Saved in Credential Manager in Windows.
Freaking ridiculous.
How about this?
How about just, just none of this?
That's an option.
I mean, I bought the game on Steam.
You know who I am.
Yeah.
Anyway.
I also like, there might be some reason why this is bad or something, but because you have
to log into the stupid thing.
I am logged into whatever the Xbox account.
I'm logged into all the various Windows gaming junk on my computer because I was trying to,
trying to somehow get Forza multiplayer to function without falling apart completely,
which I wasn't successful at.
Why can't I just grab the login from that?
The Teams one that we talked about last week is probably the one that makes me the most angry.
Yeah.
When it logs me out, which I never asked it to do, and then I need it to go away right
now and you can't close it.
It'll just keep reopening until you re-authenticate.
Also, there's a, there's a bug in Teams where if you click, it'll, it'll prompt you
for a text or for SMS or phone call.
And if you click it right away or something, it like doesn't work until you like close it
and then click it or something.
Do you, do you know the one I'm talking about?
I, I ran into that.
Yeah.
Like that's been there for years.
Long time.
Yeah.
Like it's like, it's like people at Microsoft don't use their own software.
Anything like that should be solved within a week if they're using the software based
on just how avoidable and how obnoxious it is.
This was like probably five years ago.
So it's been quite a while.
But I knew a team at Microsoft that use Slack.
This was a long time ago.
No idea if that's still a thing.
All right.
Hey Luke, how do you feel about EOD finally being removed from Tarkov?
Oh.
Also your thoughts on Tarkov right now as a whole.
Cheers guys.
Uh, I guess, yeah.
I don't know.
The EOD being removed from Tarkov thing.
I don't know if I care.
Um.
What is the EOD thing?
End of day?
It, it's, uh, edge of darkness.
I think it stands for.
Uh, and it was just like a fancy expensive version of the game that you could buy that
like you had more storage space in the game and things like that.
Um, I don't know if it really matters.
Um, as far as my understanding goes, a lot of the cheaters just bought non EOD accounts
anyways.
That, the only thing I, I really care about with the game, um, in regards to that I guess
would be anything they can do to reduce cheaters.
Um, and they're not doing enough.
So, I don't really care if they turned off EOD or not if they still haven't, you know,
done a lot for cheaters.
Um, it also gave you access to all future DLC like Arena.
Okay.
Uh, they've released one thing since they launched EOD.
They launched EOD, what, like eight years ago or something?
And there's been one thing for, for $20?
What, so I'm gonna save $20 eight years from now?
Like, I don't know.
Personally, them turning off EOD, I don't think it matters for the community at all.
Maybe someone disagrees and maybe there's some reason, whatever.
Um, the current wipe, I am actually playing it.
Uh, there are a bunch of cheaters still.
Uh, they're very easy to find.
They added a thing where you can view the profile of the person that, that, uh, killed
you.
Um, and you can see their, like, KD, how old their account is, uh, all these other various
things.
Um, which is very interesting except it combines-
this is not gonna make sense to either of these guys-
but it combines your, your PMC and your scav stats together in that view.
Um, so cheaters can, uh, tank their KDs by just going and dying on a scav.
Because you can't view their PMC specific stats.
Which is just like, I don't know, there's these things that are just annoying.
There's still, there's still very easy ways to detect them.
Like viewing, uh, their account on flea and stuff like that.
There is a lot of really great things in the current patch.
This has been a very fun wipe to play.
I don't know if I'm gonna end up playing the whole thing or not.
Um, there's some things that are already feeling pretty painful.
Like the, the armor changes, they have actual plates in the game now that you can take in and out of,
um, like armor carriers or whatever else.
That is cool.
Uh, except it's like super bugged in a bunch of different ways.
Cause of course it is.
Um, you can see PMC specific stats.
Yeah. I think that's for yourself.
I don't think that's for the other people.
Um, maybe I'm wrong about that.
I know you can see that for yourself.
You can see scav PMC and overall combined, but I think for other people, you can only see their overall.
Uh, vaulting is a great addition to the game.
They did some changes to recoil, which feel fantastic.
They did some changes to, uh, ammo that's found in raid and, and what ammo you can put on the flea.
And that all actually seems to be an improvement to me.
Different changes to the hideout, including hall of fame and the weapon rack.
Both seem fantastic.
Um, bunch of different things that feel better.
The game's still riddled with cheaters.
And hey, take that, take that back.
I used to be a hatchling back in the early day.
Did you play?
I did, yeah.
Right when it came out, it was like the new hotness, right?
Yeah.
But I never got to the point of meta that you did, which is very interesting to see, to be perfectly honest.
Yeah, I, I can't, I, I wish I could, I wish I could fully, permanently quit Tarkov.
Um, because...
Yeah.
Boy, is it a frustrating game to enjoy, but...
I hate those.
I keep, I keep coming back.
Do you want another one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hey, LLD.
I saw Linus review of the Pixel 8 on short circuit and has made me consider swapping back to Android.
I saw that the photos look great in the video.
How much has Luke's experience reflected this?
Oh, um, I'm not so much of a photo taker and my feelings on phones are going to be very boring to you if you want reviews out of them.
Um, I mostly just want it to get out of my way and it has successfully done that, to be honest.
Um, my main complaints would be about the form factor.
I kind of wish I bought the smaller one, but that's also becoming less of an issue over time because I just don't really care that much.
Um, I have had no issues with bugs, which is nice.
Um, it seems like a very good phone.
I don't know.
It seems like a great phone.
I just, my amount of cares for phones these days is not super high.
What do you think of the current state of the internet where everyone is mostly going on like five big platforms and websites?
Blogs and forums are visited not that often by average people.
I mean, I think it was better before Google search got so much worse.
Like I feel like, um, that really does seem to be the core problem.
Yeah.
They will, it's a combination of them trying to give you the result right under your search query rather than clicking through to actually, you know, read anything or give a visit to the site that the information was pulled from.
And, um, and just generally being less useful, like, man, is it ever full of ads and sponsored posts.
And just, it's like, it's hard to even remember how good it was before.
Um, yeah, I know.
There's no, there's no doubt that it's a huge problem.
And we saw this when, with the Reddit uprising that ended up being not even an uprising at all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, it seems like, um, it seems like we're in kind of like a lock in for the first time of the internet.
There's certain sites that just seem like they will like never go away.
Oh, with my pixel.
No, I've had no issues with people.
People are saying, um, any wifi slash data slash connection issues?
No, not at all.
Um, and I've actually been, I've been playing a ton of Pokemon go so I can get out for walks.
Um, I think it was last weekend.
I walked, I think it was 16 kilometers on Saturday alone.
Um, and have had zero issues whatsoever.
So, yeah, no, no problems there.
It's been, it's been honestly, in regards to bugs and issues like that, it has been flawless.
Zero problems in that regard at all.
In your AW2725DF review, you shocked with how much better you were tracking in Halo.
Were you aware that Halo added aim assist for mouse?
Do you think this is a good thing for the future of FPS games?
I was not aware.
Um, I'm honestly not that big into it for future of FPS games.
But what I will say is that I went home and played some more alien, uh, some more alien,
some more Halo Infinite at home and was not playing as well.
So I don't think it's purely that.
Hi, WAN.DLL.
Mind-blowing seeing Thunderbolt share.
Assuming it's specific to blue CPU and GPU, but do you think this will be the push Intel's GPUs need?
What are the implications for the industry and businesses?
Um, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this could be used for.
Um, especially if Thunderbolt gets to the level of ubiquity that I would like to see it at.
Um, as for being specific to blue CPU and GPU, actually I do not think that is the case.
It's software based.
So right now it's only for Thunderbolt certified computers.
Um, I think it is not impossible that eventually Intel could gift this to USB IF the same way
that they did the Thunderbolt 3 specification in the first place.
Um, as for the GPU though, that is not Intel specific.
You could have a different GPU in the system.
No problem and Thunderbolt share would work exactly the same way it does now.
Theoretically.
It's all alpha right now though.
Linus, was buying the TCL 115 inch TV the only time you felt buyer's remorse?
Um, I don't actually have any buyer's remorse.
That's, I guess I'm just a really good actor.
Uh, it was, it's mostly a hook for the video.
It's an excuse to talk about Hisense's, um, potentially better TV.
But here's the thing.
Hisense's TV is not out.
Yeah, it's a big one.
Samsung's TV will probably cost many times what the TCL one did.
Hisense's TV is also smaller and I'm watching content on my TCL right now.
I'm actually stoked on that purchase.
It's a wicked TV.
It's like kind of amazing.
I freaking love it.
Honestly, the story attached to it is super cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The fact that it's like my smuggled TV.
Um, and you know, before you, before you call me out on this, I don't think, I don't
think a throwaway line in a video, like doing show coverage of another TV that has better
on paper specs where I say, so this is what buyer's remorse feels like is, I don't think
it's dishonest.
I think it's just one of those things where it's like, I'm, I'm, I'm playing a bit of a
character sometimes in videos.
Um, and I could, I could see someone being frustrated that they bought a TV in, you know,
December, um, and then forgot about CES in January when all the cool new stuff is going
to get announced.
But no, I'm, I'm not, I'm not upset.
Hey, wan.png, how have you, sorry, I forgot my rule.
How, how, hey, wan.png, have you all been able to enjoy tech for what it is and, uh, not
like instantly start thinking about how you would script it into a new video?
No.
Even me.
Oh, that's hard.
And I've been out of it for years.
I still see stuff and go like, oh, video idea.
Like it's, it's just.
That's interesting.
It's drilled into my brain hole.
Do you still get the same like rush?
Cause you just went video idea.
Like, does it still feel like that?
Kind of.
Yeah.
And then I'll, I'll literally like sit there and try to break down like, okay, am I just
excited about this because I like this thing or does this fit like the audience that we
have?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Start analyzing it.
Linus looks really proud actually.
I'll, I'll often fire off ideas like that to different writers on the team.
Exactly the same.
Um.
Amazing.
And sometimes they either end up becoming a video however long later or they don't.
I don't know.
Hi, WAN.DLL.
It's 6am in Denmark and my SO is annoyed.
I got out of bed just to send this message.
What are some dreams or wishes that you have for yourself or loved ones?
Any long term goals perhaps?
I want my kids to be able to find a community.
I talked about this a little bit before how I'm deeply concerned that their entire peer
group is going to move away from the Vancouver area and they're going to be left with nobody
that they grew up with.
And I got to say for me, um, hanging around with people I grew up with honestly hasn't
been that big of a deal.
Like I, I don't miss it that much.
I'm kind of not really a people person anyway.
Um, but there are times when I'm like, oh man, yeah, it would have been cool to stay
connected.
Um, and I would, I don't want them to miss out, especially if they are more people personally.
Um, I also want Yvonne to be able to cut back.
I, um, just because I subject myself to this forever doesn't mean that she should be subjected
to this forever.
I think that, um, there's been a little bit of a renewed conversation around YouTuber burnout
over the last couple of weeks.
Oh yeah.
Uh, we saw Tom Scott, uh, hang it up.
Um, and you know, people, people have asked me before, I've had a lot of conversations
about this actually.
It's like, you know, um, how, you know, how do you keep doing this?
Or like, uh, I'll talk to people who are relatively new to the game and they'll be like, yeah,
yeah, I could do this forever.
I'm like, yeah, well, pace yourself.
Um, this career is a, it's a destroyer.
Um, it's, it's, it's a ton of weight, you know, just having that constant, um, scrutiny,
right?
You can't, you can't go home from work and ignore everything.
Yeah.
And especially once you reach a certain level, which, you know, obviously was the goal,
right?
It's to, you know, to win the game, to, to get good.
Uh, but once you reach a certain level, like you, um, I, I always feel watched in public.
You are.
Yeah.
And it's the, yeah, that's not like weird paranoia because anyone who build, who's ever built
a computer basically.
Uh, and no, not really.
But when I walk around somewhere like a CES or walk around to Best Buy, yeah, like when
I'm driving down the street, I'm like, can I pick my nose right now?
You know, right?
Like I, uh, yeah, yeah.
Jay's stepping back for health.
That's another one.
So it's, yeah, it's tough.
Um, I, I, I want Yvonne to be able to cut back.
That's, that's a personal goal.
Yeah.
Hey, DLL, how do you guys stay organized?
To do lists, uh, efficiency, calendar management, zero inbox?
Calendar management's huge for me.
Uh, and, uh, Teams and Slack both support a feature where you can send yourself personal
messages.
I used to do the thing that I got from Linus, which was I would email myself all the time.
Um, but sometimes in certain scenarios, the ideas would be flowing quick.
I'd be kind of spamming myself with emails and it would bury other stuff.
So I prefer PMing myself on chat applications that support it, which are the work ones luckily
and both of them.
Um, so I do that now.
I don't send myself emails anymore.
I do sometimes technically, and I don't know how I would define the difference there, but
sometimes it makes more sense to me to send an email to myself than to send a chat message.
Uh, I, I can't communicate the difference, but I, I do understand it internally.
Uh, I don't know.
Whatever.
Um, let's see.
Hey, Dela, what is one non-tech skill that you are proud of having?
What is one non-tech skill you wish you had?
Um, I enjoy playing musical instruments, but I always wished I had more visual artistry
skills.
Hmm.
That's a good deal on a WAN hoodie.
I guess they used the, uh, credit from the backpack.
Oh.
Anywho.
That, that, that was a merch message.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh, I think we're both thinking.
Trying to think of any tech non, any non-tech skills I have.
I do, like, three things.
I play badminton, which I'm okay at.
I do this, and I hang out with my family.
You're a really good husband.
Ah.
Yeah, I'm great at sex.
There you have it.
Slash ass.
X.
Um.
Got him.
And, uh, non-tech skill.
How'd you know that was a tech skill?
I got my robotic ding-a-ling.
I mean, I just assumed, you know.
Uh.
Uh.
Here at CES.
Uh.
Uh.
Didn't I do that one year?
I think I did that one year.
I think I actually did that one year.
Really?
I got a little weird with CES content sometimes.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
That might be true.
I'm pretty sure I did that one year, though.
Moving on?
Shall we just move on?
Uh.
I'm pretty quick at folding laundry.
Nice.
You know?
Nice.
Nice.
That's one of my chores.
I've no idea.
Um.
Skill that I wish I had.
I have always kind of felt this way.
I wish I had faster reaction time.
I don't think my reaction time is particularly bad.
But I think reaction time applies to...
She kicks my ass at like everything, so like, whatever.
To so many things in life.
Like reflexes?
Yeah.
Alright.
Well, now I feel bad.
Why?
Because you beat me at like everything.
You also beat me at a bunch of stuff.
Super checks?
We're going to play super checks tonight and you're going to smash.
You beat me two weeks ago.
Yeah.
It's not purely reflex based though, is it?
No.
No, but reflexes improve so many things.
Yeah.
So many things.
So many things.
So many different games actually.
Oh wow, he is slow.
I just didn't dodge that.
That was Archangel of Death that made me do that in the float plane chat.
I got a mug here.
Reflexes?
You can dodge a mug.
You can dodge a ball.
I might dodge that one.
I don't know.
No, I think they apply to...
I think far more games are really just who has better reflexes than people actually realize.
No.
Yeah.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Hell no.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Yeah.
No.
I do not.
I do not win at super checks because of my reflexes.
No, I'm not saying that.
I just mean like, I can't even think of a game that you just win from reflexes.
Strong disagree.
I think you might be underestimating how much reflexes play a role in a game like super checks.
Oh, no, no.
I absolutely agree that they play a role.
But I think that you could have much lower, I think you could have much higher response times and do a lot with cutting down angles.
That's because, as we've talked about, super checks has a significant amount more of strategy and skill component than a lot of those types of games.
Sure, but like what games?
Name a game.
He's got nothing.
The standard air hockey one.
No way.
Tons of that is reflexes.
Sure, but tons of it is also precision.
Yeah.
But a huge amount of defense in that game is reflexes.
If you play good enough shots, you don't need defense.
So reflexes can't be more than half of the game.
That's a worse statement than my statement.
Well, your statement's terrible.
Connor, I was trying to say badminton.
Ooh, yeah, no.
I don't think so, to be honest.
I think badminton probably takes, this might be a really hot take that you might disagree with.
I think badminton might take less reflexes than most people think when they watch it.
I think it takes more strategy and planning and pre-positioning and stuff like that.
So a huge part of it is preparation.
Yeah.
If you start swinging when you're defending, especially at a high level, if you start swinging for the defensive shot when your opponent strikes the shuttle, you are too late.
You have to be swinging already, and then they strike, then you reposition, then you hit.
So, yeah, reflexes is not enough.
Not even close.
You have to prepare ahead of time.
And, I mean, I'm sure any baseball hitter will tell you the same thing.
It's like it's not, part of it is like, is mental.
Like it's got, it's trying to read the other player.
It's like you can't just rely on reflexes.
So, Raging Ozaru said, so bad drivers are more likely to have bad reflexes.
I don't know about that.
I think I'm getting hamburger hot dogged right now pretty hard.
Just, just putting that out there.
Just saying.
So you're just completely getting rid of skill component to everything, Luke?
That's, that's, this is my point, though, is I think people are taking it that way, which is literally not at all what I said.
Chewy says, our community manager says, part of it's mental, part of it's anabolic steroids.
Oh my goodness.
Jeez.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Based.
Okay.
You know what?
What else we got?
I'm going to stop talking about it now, but yeah, I wish I could, I wish I could.
Yeah.
I think all of us understood what you did.
He's preparing.
That's what's going to help this time.
Terrible.
Tried to volleyball header it.
That's, um, not volleyball.
Try to.
Football.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There we go.
Good job.
Gotta play some footy.
Hi, DLL.
Maybe that's the skill I actually want.
Yeah.
You just, you just want to hit things with your head?
Maybe I want to have not hit so many things with my head.
Uh, that's right.
Hi, DLL.exe, pronounced X-E-E-E.
Thanks for being awesome.
At Luke, do you think there's a benefit in ITIL certification if looking to pivot careers
into IT?
Uh, I would look at IT jobs that you want or think you would be able to get based on your
previously existing, uh, experience in education slash the experience in education that you will
gain before you start looking, uh, and look into what they need.
Certifications can be good, but what certifications different companies want can vary quite a bit.
A decent amount of them might not even necessarily be looking for any, or if they don't list any,
they might still see certifications and see it as a benefit, even though they're not listing it.
Um, the things that people look for is quite varied.
I personally really like seeing home lab when I'm looking for people for IT stuff.
Uh, it varies a lot.
So I can't really necessarily say yes or no.
I don't think it would hurt, but I also think there, there, there might be better ways of doing
so.
It's, it's not a bad thing.
It's a good thing.
Um, could you just get into that workforce now and be gaining experience?
Which might be even better and maybe you get that certification while you were on the job?
Maybe.
If it's not possible, maybe go get the cert.
It ranges.
Hey, LDD, uh, who has given you the best tech advice that you weren't expecting?
Sorry, who is this, Linus, Duke, and Dan?
I guess so.
Or, uh, LDD, so that would be Dinus, Duke, and Lan.
Oh, I've had that a couple times.
I think that's the new one.
Dinus.
I like that.
Uh, who's given you the best tech, tech advice that you weren't expecting?
Wasn't planning on buying this, but let's go.
I gotta swag it.
Um, I arch, I archived.
I curated this, but I couldn't think of an answer.
So.
The best tech advice you weren't expecting is the, is the hard part.
I'm usually expecting tech advice from the kinds of people who can give me tech advice.
Like, sure, I've gotten lots of great tech advice from Wendell, but like, you walk into
a room and you should be expecting tech advice from Wendell, so it's, you know, the hilarious part is-
You know what, I got something recently, I can't think of what it is.
The first person that jumped in my mind was Wendell.
Yeah, I know, I just, I like stealing your answers for things.
But I was like, yeah, it's too expected.
I think I have one, though.
Uh, it's, little man, your son.
Oh!
Uh, there was a, I don't remember what it was, it was something either to do with Discord or
Minecraft, and he was like, uh, I think they were having some trouble with something, and
I had been asked to look into it, and I was like, I don't know anything about Minecraft,
and he ran up and just fixed it.
And I was like, wow.
Yeah, he does know his Minecraft nonsense pretty good.
Yeah, and this was like two years ago, I think?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Minecraft is the only reason he knows how to type.
But he can, like, touch type.
It's like, oh, okay.
For me, it was MSN Messenger.
For him, it's Minecraft.
Got it.
Works.
Actually, it was the palace, if I'm being 100% accurate.
The palace is why I learned to type.
And the reason was because people's messages were fleeting.
Oh!
So, you had your avatar sitting next to each other, and as far as I could tell, I don't
remember it anymore, but it was, maybe there was a way to see the history for the room.
Whether there was or wasn't, it was definitely beneficial if you wanted to keep up with the
flow of conversation.
Especially because I'm a multi-message sender.
So, I will tee it up, and then I'll follow with, like, a punchline as two messages.
So, I gotta be quick if I want to do that before they get a chance to respond to the first thing
I said.
So, it's a stupid thing, but yeah, I can definitely type.
But yeah, no, he can type, and it seems to be because he doesn't have voice chat with
randoms.
So, he uses text chat a lot in-game.
That makes sense.
Got that lead speak.
Yeah.
And that's it for the show.
We've got that end of the WAN show.
So, thank you so much for tuning in, guys.
There's still a little bit of CES coverage coming.
There's that BTF video that I talked about.
You're definitely going to want to check that out.
There's the AI Roundup.
You're definitely going to want to check that out.
I think there's still some more Short Circuit buddy.
It's a good thing the show's over.
There's some Short Circuit videos coming.
I've got a lot of good stuff lined up.
Make sure you don't miss it this weekend, and we'll see you again next week.
Same bad time, same bad channel.
Bye!
I'm going to a curling tournament tomorrow.