NVIDIA At War With The Media - WAN Show May 23, 2025

Summary

Detailed Summary of "NVIDIA At War With The Media" - WAN Show May 23, 2025

Title: NVIDIA At War With The Media
Podcast: The WAN Show
Hosts: Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere
Release Date: May 24, 2025

In this episode of The WAN Show, Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere delve into the tumultuous relationship between NVIDIA and the tech media, dissecting recent controversies surrounding NVIDIA's RTX 5000 series launch. Additionally, they explore competing GPU releases from AMD and Intel, advancements in AI-generated content, significant consumer rights rulings from German courts, updates from Microsoft, and notable highlights from Computex 2025. The hosts balance critical analysis with reflections on maintaining positivity within the tech review community.

---

1. NVIDIA’s Conflict with Tech Media

The episode opens with Linus and Luke addressing the core topic: NVIDIA's strained interactions with technology reviewers and media outlets, particularly in the wake of the RTX 5000 series launch.

Selective Seeding and Driver Delays

Linus expresses frustration over NVIDIA's selective seeding practices, where only high-end GPU variants receive early access, skewing reviews and consumer perceptions.

Linus [05:29]: "It looks like what they're trying to do is they're trying to create an environment where all the reviews of when you search for 'RTX 5000' are going to be of the TI16 gig because they're just not even going to bother seeding these other cards and they're going to kind of try to bury it and make sure that it doesn't get covered that much."

He further criticizes the company's approach to driver releases, which have led to embargo breaches and inconsistent review timelines.

Linus [25:29]: "They intentionally obfuscate product information every launch to make it easier to sell older generation hardware."

Control Over Media Narrative

Luke adds that NVIDIA's control extends beyond just GPUs, affecting how the media discusses their products.

Luke [36:11]: "They don't care if you, like, go after them."

Both hosts express concerns that NVIDIA's tactics may damage the credibility of hardware reviews and foster an environment of fear among reviewers.

Linus [36:21]: "They can be pushy and they can be petty and they can be vindictive."

Potential Impact on the Review Ecosystem

The discussion highlights how NVIDIA's behaviors could alienate reviewers and manipulate the market by prioritizing certain narratives over unbiased evaluations.

Luke [46:05]: "Very key. Very key."

2. AMD’s 9060 XT Release

Shifting focus, the hosts discuss AMD's launch of the Radeon 9060 XT GPU, highlighting its pricing and performance dynamics.

Pricing Concerns

Linus [03:03]: "AMD revealed the 9060 XT. It's gonna be launching June 5th, which is in just a couple of weeks. The 8 gig version is $299 and the 16 gig version is at an MSRP of $349."

Linus questions the value proposition, especially considering the 128-bit memory bus, which traditionally implies lower performance at that price point.

Performance and Ray Tracing

Despite pricing concerns, Linus acknowledges that AMD has made strides in ray tracing and upscaling technologies, making the 16GB variant an attractive option for certain consumers.

Linus [04:04]: "The performance looks pretty darn okay. And AMD is even like decent at ray tracing and they've got like all the upscaling technology and all of that."

3. Intel’s Arc Pro B60 Announcements

The conversation transitions to Intel's announcement of the Arc Pro B60 and B50 workstation GPUs, built on their XE2 Battlemage architecture.

Professional GPU Solutions

Linus highlights the practical features tailored for professional environments, such as low power consumption and easy compatibility with various desktop chassis.

Linus [20:35]: "These are dual width, half height. They come with both the half height and full height bracket. So you can throw these things into basically any desktop chassis and boom."

Battle Matrix and AI Workloads

The hosts discuss Intel's Battle Matrix software, which aims to optimize AI workloads by pooling multiple GPUs, despite expectations that performance may lag behind NVIDIA's solutions.

Linus [25:13]: "And they're not giving pricing for B60 Pro, but what they are saying is that that 5 to $10,000 is for the whole chassis with anywhere from 1 to 8 GPUs."

4. AI-Generated Content and Its Implications

Addressing the rise of AI-generated content, Linus showcases Google's DeepMind VO3 video model, exemplifying how AI can produce highly realistic but deceptive media.

Deceptive Realism

Linus [08:59]: "If you didn't tell me that this was completely generated, like the dude in the corner, the environment, the player model. If you didn't tell me that this was AI generated, I would not know."

Misinformation Risks

The hosts express concerns about the potential for AI to spread misinformation, making it harder for audiences to discern real content from AI-generated fabrications.

Linus [10:11]: "There's little things that was made with apparently $500 worth of credits. That's wild."

5. German Courts' Rulings on Consumer Rights

Linus and Luke delve into recent German court decisions that bolster consumer rights, particularly regarding subscription services and data privacy.

Netflix Case: Informed Consent for Price Increases

At [90:11], Luke summarizes a landmark case where Netflix was ordered to reimburse a customer for unauthorized subscription price hikes.

Luke [90:11]: "A district court in Cologne has ordered Netflix to reimburse a customer €200 for failing to get the customer's consent for subscription price increases."

They discuss the broader implications for how subscription services must handle price modifications, emphasizing the necessity for clear and informed consent from consumers.

Cookie Banner Regulations

Further, they highlight a ruling requiring websites to redesign cookie consent banners to prevent manipulation and ensure users can easily reject cookies.

Linus [126:07]: "Cookie banners must not be designed to encourage users to consent and that website operators must offer a clearly visible reject all button on the first level of cookie consent banners."

6. Microsoft’s Updates on AI and Linux Integration

The hosts cover Microsoft's announcements from Build 2025, focusing on enhanced AI integration and the open-sourcing of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Open-Source WSL and Enhanced Linux Compatibility

Linus [146:07]: "Microsoft has made their Windows subsystem for Linux and LSX open source with the code up on GitHub. Now LSX allows Windows to natively run ELF executables and implement Linux syscalls inside the Windows kernel."

AI Enhancements in Windows 11

They discuss the Model Context Protocol, which aims to integrate AI agents more seamlessly with native Windows applications, potentially revolutionizing user interaction with the OS.

Linus [146:07]: "Microsoft is also adding model context protocol Support in Windows 11 for tighter integration with AI."

7. OpenAI’s Acquisition of LoveFrom

A brief segment touches upon OpenAI's acquisition of Johnny Ive's design company, LoveFrom, for a substantial sum.

Strategic Value and Industry Impact

Linus [122:03]: "But how much space can we gain? Here's some examples."

Linus questions the strategic benefits of the acquisition, expressing skepticism over LoveFrom's contributions justifying the $6.5 billion price tag.

Linus [122:15]: "But like, can we contextualize this at all? Like this must be, this must be a game changer."

8. Highlights from Computex 2025

Throughout the episode, Linus and Luke share insights and impressions from Computex 2025, showcasing innovative hardware and software advancements.

SteamOS 3.7.8 Update

Linus [127:08]: "SteamOS 3.7.8, which comes with official support for third-party PC handhelds."

They note improvements in compatibility and functionality, making SteamOS a more versatile option for gamers using handheld devices.

Secret Lab’s Advanced Cooling Solutions and Unique GPU Cases

The hosts highlight Secret Lab's new designs, emphasizing their commitment to cooling efficiency and aesthetic appeal in gaming setups.

Linus [123:04]: "The Silverstone retro case is legitimately cool. This was actually cool, but it's not a new idea, that's for sure."

Innovative Peripheral Developments

They discuss cutting-edge peripherals like Thermaltake's Mine Cube AIO coolers and Lian Li's curved display AIOs, praising their design and functionality.

Conclusion

Linus and Luke conclude the episode by reflecting on the importance of maintaining a balanced perspective within the tech review community. They advocate for constructive criticism without succumbing to negativity, emphasizing that fostering a healthy ecosystem benefits both creators and consumers alike.

Luke [84:32]: "But we don't have to make this a fun niche to be in instead of a niche that just screams all of the time."

Linus [84:19]: "Yeah, I like building gaming PCs and stuff. I think it's fun and cool."

They encourage creators to stand up against unethical business practices while preserving the enjoyable aspects of tech enthusiasm.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Linus [05:29]: "It looks like what they're trying to do is they're trying to create an environment where all the reviews of when you search for 'RTX 5000' are going to be of the TI16 gig because they're just not even going to bother seeding these other cards and they're going to kind of try to bury it and make sure that it doesn't get covered that much."

• Linus [25:29]: "They intentionally obfuscate product information every launch to make it easier to sell older generation hardware."

• Linus [36:21]: "They can be pushy and they can be petty and they can be vindictive."

• Linus [46:05]: "Very key. Very key."

• Linus [05:29]: "They can be pushy and they can be petty and they can be vindictive."

• Linus [122:03]: "But how much space can we gain? Here's some examples."

These quotes encapsulate the hosts' critical stance on NVIDIA's tactics and their implications for the tech media landscape.

---

Final Thoughts:

NVIDIA At War With The Media offers a comprehensive exploration of the ongoing conflicts between one of the tech industry's giants and the media outlets responsible for unbiased product reviews. Linus and Luke provide insightful critiques, supported by real-world examples and personal experiences, while also covering a broad spectrum of related topics that impact consumers and the tech ecosystem at large. Their balanced approach underscores the necessity for integrity and fairness in tech journalism, amidst evolving challenges posed by corporate strategies and advancing technologies.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond. Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into sign up for your $1 per month [e-mail] specialoffer that's not what this page is supposed to look like. What is up, you delightful marshmallow chickens? That's right, y' all, my peeps. And we're here coming to you live. We got a great show lined up for you guys this week. In classic Nvidia fashion. They are currently at war with what seems like basically the entire tech media will be talking about what's going on and also about how none of this is new. Cool. Go Nvidia. Also, we'll be talking about some of the really cool stuff we saw here at Computex. Okay, there wasn't that much of that. We'll be talking about some of the zany stuff that we saw while we were here at Computex in Taiwan. What else we got this week, Mr. Luke?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The German courts are doing genuinely very cool things.

[Linus Sebastian]

We both linked at least one cool thing. Yeah, but it's the coolest thing that I think I've seen in many years out of Germany.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fair. And steamos.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not saying the Germans were right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Steamos moves one step closer to a wider release with new update. Thank you. Intro button. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't have one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who does it? Good luck, Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you do it? Nice. It's running.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you by. Oh, God, I can't read the thing. Thermaltake. And don't forget our rap partner, dbrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, whoever takes this golden chair in our hotel room. No, no. It's Secret Lab. It's Secret Lab. Okay, we are. We are off to a really good start today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you want to get into first?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Problems.

[Linus Sebastian]

Should we talk about. Should we talk about Nvidia's little kerfuffle with reviewers?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. I guess they're being nice. Before 5000 series actually over, why don't we.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no. Why don't we other Computex GPU things? Because there was actually a fair bit to like about. Well, there was a fair bit to be pretty okay with about GPUs at Computex.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stuff is interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you gonna buy one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I was gonna buy one anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

Amd revealed the 9060 XT. It's gonna be launching June 5th, which is in just a couple of weeks. The 8 gig version is 299 and, and we're not super stoked on that, but the 16 gig version is at an MSRP anyway of 349 with. Yes. Okay. It's only a 128 bit bus card, which used to mean it would be like $130, not $350. But it's. The performance looks pretty darn okay. And AMD is even like decent at ray tracing and they've got like all the upscaling technology and all of that. So if you're into that, then you can turn all of that stuff on. I mean, that's pretty neat. I know a lot of people are really upset that there's even an 8 gig version of the card at all, but can I play devil's advocate for a moment here?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, let's move on. Intel announced the Arc Pro B60. Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, yeah. You're just not going to let me want.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. I mean, look, if that's the dynamic you want to have, I'm okay. I, I, you know, we could get some leather.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You like that? Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh boy. Well, it's going to be one of those kinds of shows today. Conveniently. There's a bed right here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Poor Andy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Andy. I heard that if you do that kind of work, you basically can never find like, you know, non pornographic work ever again. Is that going to be a problem for you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that a thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Couldn't you just not put it on your resume? Or does it like get around?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Feel like we might never know. Maybe he's done this kind of work under the table.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was one day only fun creator. Or only. Or on top of the table. I mean table's got all kinds of surfaces you can get on top of or under. True. Okay, so hold on, hold on. Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. For the 9060 XD, should we be upset about AMD providing the option for someone to have a crappier GPU at a lower price?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The thing that gets me is the lower price is still 300, I'm assuming American dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. And the other thing that also gets me is that AMD just cannot decide what their story is on 8 gig GPUs because you know what? Whenever they have, you know, a VRAM advantage, they're all like, pathetic. Our competitor is full of crap, basically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then when they don't, they're like, oh, it doesn't matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Then they're like, well, actually it's fine for 1080p gaming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I went with Sammy to a LAN cafe this week and like, looking at literally all of the games that everyone was playing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It doesn't matter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It wouldn't matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

However. However, Counterpoint. I was supposed to be the devil's advocate, but I guess we're doing it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Still doesn't make me happy. If I'm spending $300 on a card, I should get 16 gigs of RAM. We're in the role reverse. Come on. It also to play those games.

[Linus Sebastian]

To play those games that Luke is talking about. Right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could also just be using, I don't know, a 5000 series Radeon card. Or, you know, like, realistic. Realistically, I could be using like a Polaris card to play League of Legends.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I mean, you might want high frame rate though.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is true. This is true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because a lot of them were playing. A lot of them were playing CS 1.6, which was sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

One.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was a mix of two. Go to or whatever. And then 1.6.

[Linus Sebastian]

Shut up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, like, no source.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they. They had a. They had a LAN version of like 1.6, so they could keep playing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, is LAN gaming coming? Okay, hold on a second. Because shoot this. Actually. Okay, we're gonna come back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was. There was tons of League of Legends. Yeah, there was tons of Counter Strike in general. There was a little bit of valorant.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're gonna come back to GPUs at Computex more broadly and specifically Nvidia's whole kerfuffle with the media. Because I actually want to completely pivot to another one of our topics. And it's going to be quite the pivot. Where is. Yes, the. The Google DeepMind VO3 video model. Okay. And I promise you this is related to people playing lan versions of CS 1.6 somehow. Okay. Google DeepMind VO3. It's crazy. Oh. Oh, shoot. Is Dan gonna screen share? We have no screen share.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, can you do example from prompt streamer getting a victory royale with just his pickaxe? This is absolutely mind blowing. Dan, hit them with that. And then I'm gonna look over there for when it's done playing. Because I gotta tell you guys, like, I'm. I follow the tech space. I'm reasonably attuned with the AIs that the kids are fooling around with. If you didn't tell me that this was completely generated, like the dude in the corner, the environment, the player model. If you didn't tell me that this was AI generated, I would not know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's, it's, it's, it's going to be really bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

And this is just like, this is not even the scariest example. Dan, can you queue up that pharmaceutical commercial?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, this one's brutal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, dude, this is incredible. Okay, I'm going to not talk over this one. Oh, as soon as Dan's ready thing worked every day felt heavy.

[Dan]

I felt trapped playing out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then I tried Pupperman. Our prescription helps your body secrete a special pheromone that attracts puppies. I took the pill before bed, and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When I woke up, there he was, the love of my life.

[Linus Sebastian]

The pill does not target depression directly, but we've found that it's back to us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's, there's people in chat being like, wait, this is generated. So Zenith is like, yeah, that looks like AI. This is gonna fool over 90 of people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Over 90. This is gonna fool over 99% probably. There's a couple little things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like I don't think we. The.

[Linus Sebastian]

The dog's tongue.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

When he's licking the guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It like a little oddly lag some stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

It does some weird stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think we saw it. There's two ladies sitting on a couch and the one, her. One part of her hair doesn't move with her head while the other part does. There's little things.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's little things that was made with apparently $500 worth of credits.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which like, that means in a year or two.

[Linus Sebastian]

And buddy who made it so at PJ A C C E T T U R O Over on Twitter, PJ A says, I used to shoot half million dollar pharmaceutical commercials. I made this for $500 in VO. 3 credits in less than a day. He also says, okay, I hate this. But he also says, what's the argument for spending $500,000 now? And like, I hate that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's not wrong.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's not the only person asking that question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, and you know, the whole ethics conversation around pharmaceutical companies, I suspect they're not gonna mind, especially when, I don't know if you've seen it, but almost every American pharmaceutical company spends more on marketing than they do on R and D. So like, if they can drop that marketing budget and not increase the.

[Linus Sebastian]

R and D budget, then surely they could lower prices.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so we're going to come back to the other stuff in our Google I O roundup because that's the only part of it that I wanted to talk about. That yes, I am tying back to people playing LAN games. I have a theory. My theory. And maybe it's just the kind of thing that I tell myself when I crawl into my bed and pull my covers up and get into a fetal position every night and go, oh my God, the world. I have a theory.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've been doing a lot of that lately.

[Linus Sebastian]

When nothing online is real, the players I'm playing against who are realistically in many cases aim botting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Or the news stories that I'm seeing in my social media feed. Or the. When, when. Or the, oh the, the, the, the questions and answers that I'm looking at on Reddit. Remember we talked about that, that undisclosed study that, that, that educational institute did where they were just like having bots interact on r. Change my mind, you know, when nothing is real, we're all gonna go, you know what? Fuck it. Oh, we're gonna just like we're gonna play video games in person. We're gonna, we're gonna demand LAN play and if gaming companies won't put LAN functionality into their games, then we'll be like, alright, I'm gonna play CS 1.6.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't remember where I read this, but I have read that apparently there's been an increase in like more provably bespoke products being demanded by consumers. Yeah, because there's, there's the whole like, oh, it's an Etsy shop and they make it themselves for sure. It's actually just from Alibaba.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's another perfect example of like everything, everything just being mass produced slop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there's, there's been an increase in like I want to buy this product and I want a video of you making it. Like that type of stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like yeah, make a video of me making this product.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But if it's custom, but it's gonna be a little bit harder to match the physical product.

[Linus Sebastian]

It will. Yeah, it will.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like actually a lot harder.

[Linus Sebastian]

It will. Dude, I maybe. Oh, okay. Like there's no point being for or against AI progress because it just, it's going to happen. The horse, the horse bolted from the pen at this point ages ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyone still having the conversation of like should we do this or not? Is just behind.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So. So unfortunately, so realistically it doesn't matter what, the next thing I say is. If I say I'm for it or against it is irrelevant.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right?

[Linus Sebastian]

But maybe that's the one comforting thought that could make me go, okay, okay, maybe that's the positive outcome that. That might come from this. But. But then the thing that made me hesitate to even say that is, is like, even with how bad. Even with how bad AI replications have been and with how, like, identifiable you know, scams have been for many years, the video is not up yet. It should be coming very soon. That collab we did with Kit Boga. Yeah, right. If people are still being fooled by Nigerian prince emails effectively, it's going to be so long before my hopeful outcome could ever possibly happen. Before this information about misinformation and disinformation propagates enough that we all just go, you know what? Basically, I just. I just don't believe anything. Forget it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you can. You can help arm some people, but it'll. It'll never work for everybody. I mean, there's. There's the problem of, like, some of those Nigerian prince scams. They. They include things like weird typos and, and things that could tip you off on purpose because they're trying to weed out people that are actually paying attention.

[Linus Sebastian]

I did not ever think about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's like a thing, apparently. But I wonder if that bar gets higher the easier it is to be more and more convincing all the time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like it would. Yeah. No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, 100% no. I think more people are going to get scammed. I mean, now that you could just generate, you know, a photorealistic Linus that will show you his tech tip and ask you to respond. Like, I. I actually saw someone on the subreddit that was saying that a scammer used my name and was apparently giving away MacBooks, which should have been your first clue. Why would anyone want that? I know better. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Andy, relax. It's okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Think he's on a MacBook now then?

[Linus Sebastian]

I gave it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think most of the editors, Andy, were mostly editors this trip on MacBooks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. We have found that. That the Adobe suite is actually more stable on Mac, which matters more when we're on mobile hardware.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're so cooked. Not great.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look, I'm. I. Contrary to the narratives that are constructed, I am not for or against anything other than whatever its utility is to me or someone else. And the price, you know, and. And also the, the intangibles or actually I was going to. Well, I was going to call repairability and intangible, but repairing things is actually quite tangible. So, so the other, you know, the, the other X factors and if a MacBook is the best tool for the job, then gosh darn it, we're going to use a MacBook for it. I don't care.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

I do agree, dude. I was using my MacBook from the MacBook challenge so far past the 30 days because other than the desktop experience, which I was quite unhappy with, it's a great computer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I got. This is a new work laptop. My last work laptop was like four or five years old. It couldn't do broadcast anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

You don't need to excuse that you allocated yourself budget for a brand new machine when you had a perfectly working machine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When it, when it first showed up, when it first showed up, there was a huge pixel issue with the screen. So we used the old Lenovo warranty thing and the dude showed up and like swapped the screen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean that was cool. There was multiple delays, cough, cough. But it wasn't debilitating. So it wasn't that big of a deal now. And it hasn't happened yet. This show, which is great, but last show we experienced it, the screen will just completely lock. The computer still functions behind. Like I can still click on things even, but the screen will completely lock. And the only way to fix it is to sleep the computer, wake it back up again. And I, one of the guys from Hardware Canucks, I was talking to him, he has the same laptop, he has the same issue. Why?

[Linus Sebastian]

And that my friends, is why. Our laptop partner for the WAN show is Dell. Hey, those Dell machines on the WAN show set have actually been like rock solid. They have, you might even say heart touching. Wait, no, no. Wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bad. Wrong. Yeah. Okay, so wait, how. Okay, I don't know how we got to where we are now from. Eight gig cards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Counter strike.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't worry about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's talk about GPUs at Computex. Intel announced the Arc Pro B60 and B50 workstation cards. They're using their XE2 battlemage architecture with. Wow. Thank you whoever prepared these notes. Today, XE Vector engines and XE Matrix extensions engines. Okay, none of that is the important thing about ARC Pro. The important thing about ArcPro is that we are talking about cards with certified drivers for just a few hundred dollars. B50 is not going to be lighting anyone's world on fire in terms of its groundbreaking performance. But what it does have is certified flipping drivers. So that when you're building out, you know, an architectural firm's office and everyone in their flipping dog needs a professional gpu, you can take your little, you know, slimline, you know, Optiplex stations or whatever, you can slap these babies in. There they are. I believe they max out at 70 watts, which means that they can work without a PCIe power cable. They are dual width, half height. They come with both the half height and full height bracket. So you can throw these things into basically any desktop chassis and boom. And I was actually, I gotta admit, when intel put up the slides about compared to last gen, I was like, y' all had an Alchemist Pro gpu. Yeah, totally missed that. Did anyone care?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, did they actually?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wow. I had no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, I had, I had no idea. And, and so I was, I was quite surprised because the slide that had all of the companies that they had certified their drivers with was like impressive. I was like, yo, SolidWorks, Autodesk, Blender, like y' all, y' all got like, like really like the big names here. That's really good for a first gen product that hasn't even launched yet. But just like on the gaming side, intel software side for ARC has been cooking like the amount of performance they squeezed out of what I think now that Battle Mage is out, intel would probably even admit was a fundamentally flawed architecture in Alchemist. Like they had, they had issues with the. I think it was with the internal caching or something. That was the reason that like you absolutely needed resizable bar or it basically went to crap town in a hurry in terms of performance. I forget what the exact technical reason was, but like there were hardware reasons that Alchemist was not very good. Boy, did they ever squeeze a lot of it. And, and that gives me so much confidence in their commit level because you can release a GPU relatively easily. And I say this as a layperson who could not possibly hope to design and release a GPU, I say this as like, compared to a CPU, GPUs are relatively, relatively small, simple. But it's the software. The software will kill you. That's the challenge that intel knew that they were coming up against. It wasn't, can we build a parallel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Processor the rate at which you need to release stable drivers, right? Because of all these new games coming out and stuff like, damn. Here's a question for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you think ARC can survive and thrive and continue forward if TAP retires?

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's get to that in a second. First let's talk about the B60. This is a more performant card, this one. Instead of being 70 watts, I believe it's a couple hundred watts. Don't quote me on that though. The watts are not in here. Doesn't matter. The point is this is meant to be more like a cheap and cheerful 24 gig AI capable card that you can have in a slightly higher end workstation. Slash, they have this concept that they were showing off called Battle Matrix and they're doing some, again, down to the software. They're doing some software tomfoolery that's supposed to make it much easier to take a whole pool of these cards, up to eight of them, combine the memory, split up your AI workloads so you can chunk it out and chew on the whole thing in parallel. And you know what, is the performance going to be as good as an Nvidia solution? Be real. No. Right, but the price, a lot cheaper. But the price literally we are talking about, if intel gets their way and this comes to market at the pricing that they're targeting, we are talking about like a full fat rack mount solution with 192gigs of usable VRAM plus you can, you know, stack it up with system memory that you can overflow into. We're talking about starting at anywhere from 5 to $10,000. And they're not giving pricing for B60 Pro, but what they are saying is that that 5 to $10,000 is for the whole chassis with anywhere from 1 to 8 GPUs. So it's like, okay, I think I can do the math and, and on the record, but you know, don't quote me on this. Right, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're saying that they think they can do even better than the $700 or so per GPU that that would, that 5 to $10,000 mark works out to like given time. I mean the hardware, right. The hardware is literally just an arc B580.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

For the, for the B60 Pro or for the Pro B60. Excuse me. So yeah, nothing should prevent them from doing this for you know, 500 bucks or whatever. And if the goal is to get an install base out there, which is an assignment that intel seems to somewhat understand at this point, then that's exactly what you need to do. You make this investment up front in the software ecosystem for developers and then you make the hardware accessible. If I can get like a whole ass server platform for realistically not that different a price from like a Mac studio.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like that, that is a, you know, a Decently substantial group of people because there's a lot of like small to medium sized businesses that want local like LLMs, inline ID assistance, stuff like that that are building these solutions. And if you could just do it with art cards, like why not?

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. Speaking of ARC cards and pricing, I had a intense conversation with a very, very, very old, old acquaintance of mine, Vivian, who is running the discrete gpu. She's a VP and gm. So basically running discrete GPU for Intel arc where I have to confess, Vivian, if you're watching this, I know you don't watch WAN show, that's totally fine. But if you're watching this, which you're not, I'm sorry, I was a little cranky. I got a little bit set off by one of the slides that intel had in their deck. The whole, the whole thing was about ARC Pro. And you know, I didn't make the video about this or anything like that, but their ARC Pro deck had one slide right at the beginning. Okay, that was like ARC battle Mage. So it was about the non pro, right. Arc battle mage leading performance per dollar. And you know, basically was kind of setting the stage for let's go non gamers. We got, we're gonna have great performance for per dollar just like we do with our gaming cards. And it was like best performance per dollar *, best value for GPUs under $300. Which is one hell of an *. Yeah, that's *2 as of November 2024. Because. Yeah, okay, so that was my face.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

The November 2024 I suspect is probably just because that's when they ran the numbers and they're not going to rerun those numbers for one slide in an ARC Pro presentation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it's a fairly convenient time to have ran the numbers.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll let that one pass. I'll let that one pass.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But the one that's been a long.

[Linus Sebastian]

Time since then, the one that I was really upset about was that it said under US$300. And when I basically was like, hey, so look, I don't want to be that guy, but it's literally my job to press GPU companies on the fact that GPUs cannot be purchased at MSRP. I don't like you guys showing this slide when I can't buy an Arc B 580 for under $300.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, this card shouldn't be able to be on the slide.

[Linus Sebastian]

That it's, that's when the conversation got a little bit intense and that's at least 93% my fault because I was just. We got off on the wrong foot a little bit. I really didn't like that. And the. And then the response was not great. I'm not gonna name who said this part because it was. It was whole group setting. There was like a dozen intel people in the room. So someone was like, yes, you can. And I was like, okay, show me. And they pulled up like, mindfactory.de or something. And I'm like, right. That's where I got a little. I got a little more frustrated. Your slide says US dollars. You don't get to convert euros to US dollars. And tell me I can buy an Arc B580 for under US$300. That, sir, is actually bullshit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's whack.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you're not allowed to do that. And so what I basically said to them is, look, what I need is, I don't need you to fix it right now. I don't need you to call up Newegg, who is in the middle of the night now, and tell them to fix their pricing. But what I need is a coherent strategy that intel will be employing to ensure that ARC B580s will be available at MSRP in the US in US dollars. And then I got more intense because basically, and I'm not going to name sort of names, but people started to kind of pipe up and go, well, you know, we can't control what our board partners do in terms of pricing and what retailers do in terms of pricing. And I basically was like, I'm gonna let you finish. But I worked in the channel. Do not tell me that you absolutely have levers. You absolutely do. Whether or not you choose to pull them, that is your choice. But you have levers. You have levers in terms of production.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Arizona Iced Tea can do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have levers in terms of production. You have levers in terms of allocation of parts. You have levers in terms of the marketing funding that you provide to your partners, both manufacturing partners and retail partners. You have levers in terms of the fact that you have a Founders Edition. You have your limited edition cards that have an intel label on them that you could literally control the pricing on that only exist so that you can put pressure on other board partners to fall in line in terms of pricing. Everybody knows that's why Founders Edition exists, right? I just listed. And that's not even all of the levers. I listed many levers that you have to manage channel pricing. It's not legal in every market. But there is actually. Okay, that typically goes the other way. But there's, there's things like map pricing where you have a minimum advertised price that can be considered price fixing depending on the market. I'm just saying, illegal or not, many brands attempt to do it. So there are levers, there are levers to pull. And after things got a little intense for a little bit, I got a firm commitment that intel would come to me with a strategy where they were gonna get pricing to MSRP. And I didn't even ask for like $249.99. I was like, look, I get it. This one has three fans on it. It's $269.99.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is an OC.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. You know, whatever, product, variants, whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's fine. Yeah, that's fine. There's, there's, there's more than a decade of precedent for, hey, this one is a little more, this is one's a little more fixy fixy. You know, we, we did some extra special stuff with the VRMs. No problem with that. But if you're going to say, and this is, this is where the sticking point is. If you're going to say this GPU cost this much and you're going to ask me to say, this GPU costs this much, don't make me a liar. Yeah, I don't like that. Now, hold on a second. Call me. Hannah says, isn't this a slippery slope? Isn't this level of control the same thing you criticize Nvidia for? What I criticize Nvidia for is multifaceted. And I guess that actually transitions us perfectly into our next topic, which is RTX 5060. And in general, Nvidia's current kerfuffle with the media, very, very broadly, Nvidia's level of control is unlike almost any other company in the industry. I would say maybe not maybe Apple and Nvidia are the two kind of birds of a feather that I point to when I look at the level of control that they maintain over their product, their, their image and branding, their partners, the media. They, they both exercise it in their own special, unique ways. I mean, I remember that video that Marquez and who's the Mr. Who's the Boss? Did like ages ago, talking about the way that companies can control narrative, control the narrative through access. Neither of them named Apple, which I thought was curious at the time. I was kind of sitting there going, companies that refuse to work with you, if you, you know, you can criticize the product, but you Know, if you talk about them the wrong way, they refuse to work with you. We don't mention them in our video about companies that do that. But I get it. I get it. Yeah. So Apple is a great example of you've got to kind of play the game and they don't tell you what the rules are. So you just have to err on the side of, you know, not saying the wrong things to make sure that you, you know, stay on the list. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nvidia doesn't. Nvidia doesn't do things that way. Nvidia, for the most part, actually takes criticism. We've criticized Nvidia a lot over the years. They have generally been okay about taking criticism from the media. And I suspect the reason for it is it used to be that in general, they saw the benefit of working with media and understood that they had to take their lumps. And then now I think it's because they just kind of don't care. I think it's because it's just sort of irrelevant. So the reason has changed. But in general, they. They've taken criticism from the media.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they seem to take criticism, but they. They can be pushy about the message that they want.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, they can be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They don't care if you, like, go after them.

[Linus Sebastian]

They can be. They can be pushy and they can be petty and they can be vindictive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. Oh, yeah. Big on that last one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Big on that last one. And. And I've talked in the past about how I do think that it is a fundamental cultural issue at the company. I think it comes from the top down. But in general, they have. They have mostly. Mostly sort of, you know, tried to work with the media. But they also have their own issues, and it goes way back. Was it the 1080 launch? The one where you guys were stuck in a room with no Internet while Nvidia basically did the entire announcement that prior to that, you know, they would have briefed the press and the press would have done it. And they've slowly taken over the role of. Of spreading the news about Nvidia that the media used to have and made it Nvidia's job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't remember the exact details, but if I remember correctly, they didn't tell us stuff like the price and a few other, like, really key things that if you published an announcement video, you would really expect to have. And they kept those for the keynote. And then the keynote was, like, really long, and we couldn't really leave during it. And then after the keynote, we were stuck in this weird location where, like, nobody had Internet, there was no appropriate places to film. And there was a deadmau5 concert, super loud, in a relatively small building so that you could still hear it when you're outside, so you couldn't actually record because you just get. I mean, I'm not saying that Dead Bose himself would necessarily do this, just to be clear. But like, I'm assuming he's under some form of label that might try to copy strike your video or whatever. So, like, it was a very complicated situation and it was very intentional.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so. So, so Nvidia's. Nvidia's control. I guess what I'm saying is it's weird and it changes. Right. That's the thing that I think a lot of people miss when we're, when we talk about a company is moves that Nvidia pulled 10 years ago are not. Were not executed by the same people that are, you know, pulling moves today. So, you know, back to, back to managing pricing. Yes, yes, Nvidia absolutely put undue pressure on their board partners to meet MSRP targets that were not sustainable for their businesses.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's a different problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

We saw a large number of Nvidia board partners disappear over the last 10, 15 years. However. However, I don't have a reason to believe just yet that intel is doing the other problematic part of that, that Nvidia was doing where they are not providing their board partners with adequate margin for survival. That was the issue was that Nvidia was forcing this artificially low price while slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly chipping away the margin that they were leaving for their board partners in that target price.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think this type of stuff, including a lot of other things, is why EVGA ended up bailing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nvidia also put extremely restrictive. I was going to say the word guidelines, but they're less guidelines and more pirate law. They put extremely restrictive guidelines in place for their board partners in terms of the types of products they could build in order to differentiate their own brand. Like project or, sorry, GeForce Partner Program. G Force Partner Program, which was called out many years ago by Kyle from Hard ocp. He was the one who ended up. I think he's probably been blackballed by Nvidia more times than the current crop of YouTubers combined. Yeah, Kyle from Hard OCP did a really great job of investigating the GeForce Partner Program, which was this extremely restrictive system that Nvidia put in place for their partners that controlled everything from what kinds of products they could build to what they could clock them at to how they could package them and message them. So if you've noticed over the last 10 years that GeForce boards have gotten more and more samey and boring, even down to the packages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Extremely so.

[Linus Sebastian]

You ever notice the packages all look the same now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even this one?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, of course. It's got. It has all the, all the requirements, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they used to be so fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's what Nvidia does. Oh, we have a topic about that too, actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

He hasn't read the whole doc yet, but that one's gonna be pretty fun. So. Yes, yes. Putting pressure on your partners. Okay. To, you know, maintain pricing in the channel or whatever. Yes, that is something that I have criticized Nvidia for. But it's part of the broader Nvidia behavior that puts their partners in a position of constant fear. You know, you talk to an Nvidia partner off the record, and you kind of go, okay, well like, yeah, why don't you just, why don't you just take some of those GPUs that you got and put them on like a cool small form factor card?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're like, oh, because dad wouldn't like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're afraid. Yeah, yeah. Dad will never give me another GPU again. Dad will take my allocation of GPUs, which I do still make money on, and I need to make money on because I spent all this development cost building these approved data proved products. It'll just take my allocation for that quarter and give it to my biggest competitor. And I, I don't know for a fact, allegedly, allegedly. I don't know for a fact that they would do that, but I've, I've, I've heard this fear consistently enough from enough of Dad's children.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That I think I kind of. I think I kind of believe it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That thing happened, by the way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So screen is completely locked and I have to sleep it and then wake it up again and it'll work fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if you've ever wondered what happened, do you remember those really cool little ASRock mini desktops that used MXM laptop GPUs? You ever wonder what happened to those? You ever wonder why there was never updated mobile GPU things for a particular generation of laptops? You ever wonder why Framework has only Radeon as options? You ever wonder any of these things? It's because allegedly Nvidia's partners are terrified. I'm not. Petrified would be the right word because they won't act yeah, they are. They are petrified of running afoul of Nvidia by producing a product that Nvidia hasn't signed off on. And I gotta tell you, some of the off the record conversations I've had, so I can't repeat these because they would be too identifiable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some of the off the record conversations that I've had about Nvidia's logic for why these products can't exist. Dude, it is some moon logic. Like, makes literally no technical sense. Like, like, like, like fall of an empire. People who have no idea what any of this is are making decisions that have no basis in logic or reality. And it's very troubling. However, However, I was chatting with Alex and he has a theory that. Oh, hold on. We should do a recap of the 5060. Okay, so 5060, it's 8 gigs, 128 bit bus, it's $300. It loses to the 3060 ti and arc B580. In some tests. Multiple creators like hardware, unboxed J's, 2 cents, Paul's hardware, digital Foundry and more have criticized both the card and. This is where we get into sort of. Nvidia's not playing ball fairly. I think, I think I've talked about, I've talked about this phrase a lot, I think, in the last couple of years is good faith. You know, what does good faith mean? Engaging in good faith. Right? It means that, you know, being, for the most part, right, forthright, honest, working together on, you know, a solution that benefits everybody. And I think that's what the media asks for from companies, right? Is can we work together in good faith, understanding the value that we each bring to the table. I understand Nvidia. The value that you are bringing to the table by providing me with the card early so that I can test it and evaluate it. That has a positive effect on, on my business and that also has a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Positive reflect on the audience. Positive effect on the audience?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. So that has a positive effect on my business. It also has a positive effect on the audience who gets to have all the reviews. Multiple perspectives, which Luke and I have always stressed is extremely important. All of which had ample time to put together their analysis and present it in a way that is professional and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thorough without being pushed or forced really to say anything in particular.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very key. Very key. And that's part of Nvidia's benefit. What Nvidia gets in return is the credibility of these quotes that, hey, this card is good or it's really, well, optimized for that that they can then use to market that card without having to pay for it. Actually, my understanding is a lot of publications do charge for them to have the logo or the badge or the quote or whatever. We don't. But in a lot of cases that's the quid pro quo is we get access to the card so that we can do a great job. You get more thorough, more complete information because everybody isn't rushing against each other to be the first to publish. And Nvidia gets credible third party validation of their claims about the product. That is everybody working together in good faith. And this launch has not been handled well. Reviewers were not given drivers in time for the initial embargo. We actually. It's kind of funny to me that right now, this time exactly now, is when everybody's like really mad about this. We made a video one month ago now about the situation where Nvidia wasn't providing drivers for the eight gig variants of the 4060 series. And we basically said exactly what they've done now, which is it looks like what they're trying to do is they're trying to create an environment where all the reviews of when you search for keyword4060 are going to be of the TI16 gig because they're just not even going to bother seeding these other cards and they're going to kind of try to try to bury it and make sure that it doesn't get covered that much. So therefore the best performing videos on the topic of 4060 are going to be for this card that performs markedly better. Hey, it came to pass. We're mad about it. Now. I don't know whose permission we were waiting for to be mad about, but hey, we're all on the same page now. But there's another layer that is actually, that is actually worse. And this is. This is, this is. This is not good. Some creators were given access to the drivers ahead of time, but only if they agreed to certain stipulations like testing games at 1080p, including older cards like the RTX 2060 and 3060 or even requiring multi frame gen results to be included. Now I want to make this very clear. In our review of a 4068 gig, should we do one, we would seek to include older carts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

50 60.

[Linus Sebastian]

We would. Oh, sorry. Thank you. 50 60. We would seek to include older cards because I think that's really relevant.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Especially you want to track what people would actually be upgrading.

[Linus Sebastian]

Large install base. Yeah, okay. We would include Multi frame gen tests we have done, a lot of people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are turning those settings on, even if a lot of people in the comments are really angry about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

But what we wouldn't be doing is limiting our testing to that, because that does not paint the entire picture. So Nvidia did exactly what I predicted they would do, but they actually took it a step further than I thought that they were capable of. And that last part we should be extremely upset about. It's not the first time that Nvidia has teased a card through select media. In fact, we have participated in that before. We were the first to game on the 3090. I think it was us. And MKBHD went live with 3090 videos before the review embargo. But in that situation, it was clearly not a review. There were stipulations on what we could show, but all of that was communicated extremely transparently. It was a preview.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whereas I also tend to not mind, like, if a manufacturer is like, hey, we really want to show off this particular use case. It's not necessarily a bad thing to include, but you should still include the things that you want to include. And you can mention in that part of your video, like X manufacturer, X company, whatever thinks this use case is important, and then give your opinion on why you agree or don't agree. I don't know. I think that's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

So lame.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like, not to be surprised, it, it's. It's kind of sad to me that Nvidia seemed to get, mmm, pretty cool leading up to the 5000 series launch.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then they're just like, yeah, we're not releasing, you know, new cards for probably like two years anyway, so.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I want to talk.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

I want to talk about that. I had a chat with Alex. We just, like, bumped into each other in the lobby because we're staying in the same hotel. You know, things that happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And he had an interesting theory that Nvidia's behavior right now is not born out of malice, but is born out of just utter incompetence. Hold on, let me get there for a second. Give me a second to get there. I was very specific about the words born out of. So his theory is that after the 50 90. The 50 series. And, and, and his theory is like, you know, there's a lot of evidence to back this up is that the rollout of the 50 series has been a cluster.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, there was the black screening issue. There was the issue with cards not having the. The right number of CUDA cores In.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Them, they somehow managed to still ship that connector.

[Linus Sebastian]

They shipped some with more. They. Yeah, the, the, the. The engineering oversight on the 5090 with the, with the pin balancing the. I mean, what. What else has there been? Oh, okay. I mean, there's the fact that. There's the fact that they're announcing 5060 laptops here at Computex and you still can't buy a 5070 laptop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you not notice that? I never put that together, but that's rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, dude, like, I don't. I don't think that the GeForce side at Nvidia is either being resourced correctly or prioritized.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's that story I don't know if we talked about on Wednesday or if I just heard this somewhere, but Jensen was talking to their. Whatever. I'm going to assume the title here, but like head of AI at Nvidia and said to imagine every Nvidia employee standing in the parking lot and that they were all available and ready to work for AI. So basically you can loot any team in the company for whoever you want. And that I'm sure that happened to GeForce to a certain degree.

[Linus Sebastian]

So let's come back to my very specific wording. I don't think that this was born out of malice, but I think that once your back is against the wall, I think you start to. I think you start to find underhanded ways to dodge accountability. I think that. I think that in order to. I think that. I think this is an exercise in butt covering. I think trying to cover up how crap 5060 is. I think this is. And this is never.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I guess what you're saying is it wasn't premeditated.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Things started to go bad and then they did bad things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, that's my, that's my theory.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's my theory. Because I think you and I have both met a lot of technical people at Nvidia who would never dream of misleading about the product.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

The technical guys there are so good. They, I mean, they literally. The Nvidia literally built the industry standard tools for. Or built industry standard tools for testing, you know, frame times and GPU power.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Monitoring that tend to be like, pretty well respected and fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

They really, like, care about, you know, making a great product. So let's not imagine for a second that the technical folks there are not aware of issues.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. And, and, and if you talk to them about it, they're. They're like, yeah, yep, this one's like, really good at this. And this is a challenge in this, you know, scenario. And so if I had to guess, I'd say this just basically comes down to the same kinds of issues that, you know, we'd run into with. With intel during the stagnation years, where you just have, you know, these business monsters, these executives that are just looking to cover their hide and figure out how to get their quarterly bonus by covering up the products that aren't, you know, aren't that good, hoping, like, I don't know, the media won't notice or whatever. And it just. It just sucks because I feel bad for all those really incredible technical people who are really trying to build the best possible product.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, this is. That's fair. This is a similar story, like, all the time, right? You have the same thing with developers at gaming companies. The people working on the thing itself are not making the marketing and business decisions of the company, but they catch a lot of the flack, and a lot of times they're the ones making the thing, so it's their baby. So they feel the flack more heavily than some of the people making the decisions around how it's marketed, how it's communicated, stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I saw a really cool quote from someone@take2 that was basically just like, yeah, I don't know. Rockstar. We just leave them alone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, the CEO was it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't know. I just came across it and I was like, yeah, that's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it was sweet. I wonder if I can find it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, dude, can you imagine? Okay, look, the technical folks don't always make sustainable business decisions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, it's also a little privileged being like, the company that owns Rockstar to be like, yeah, we just leave them alone. They just make billions of dollars. So we're just like, oh, it's fine. Like, yeah, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, yes, yes. And if Rockstar, you know, wasn't, you know, making. What is it? They're still making like a quarter billion dollars a quarter on GTA 5. Yeah, and I think over $200 million a quarter on Red Dead Redemption.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So apparently the. It's a. I can't show you guys, but a Games Radar article that says Take Two's CEO is probably the world's only person to refuse the chance to play GTA 6 because I'm not a gamer and his role is to get out of their way. So basically, like, he didn't want to play it and then have comments, and then, you know, maybe he says something, someone hears something, and then something's actioned because of it. Because he's just like, I'm business. Yeah. This is not me.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna do business.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do your thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Make games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's like, all right, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, man. I get. Yeah. Very privileged.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you're going to be the CEO of a gaming company and you're not a gamer, that's probably the way to approach it. I like that, to be honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

I respect it. Yeah, I respect it. I respect it because when you have like, and like. Okay. I mean, our very own CEO, Mr. Tarantong, will occasionally, like, pitch into me with, like, content ideas, but he's always like. Or just don't. I fully recognize that this is like, not my world. And you've been doing this for 20 years and I've been a fly on the wall watching you do it on the content side of things for, you know, two years, you know. Yeah, whatever. And to his credit, occasionally the ideas are really good and the dynamic for us is a little different. So I can't really, like, feel that pressure. Right. Because he's my boss, but I'm also his boss.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm my own grandpa, you know, like that, that whole thing. Right. But I. I appreciate and respect when people can be a leader of a company, but also recognize that they are not an expert in what all the people at that company do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Probably a very small percentage of them, realistically.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. Oh, man. The bigger we get, the more I notice that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is like, I'll be like, hey, what are you working on? And someone's like, working on something. I'm like, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even within my teams, like, what I'm often looking for is a strong and well reasoned argument. Not a thing that I necessarily premeditated because a lot of times it's like, I have no idea. But based on what you're saying, is it like, pretty obvious that you've done your research and this, like, makes sense? Yeah. Okay, cool. Go for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like with the camera ops, I'll be like, hey, what do you think of this angle? Because I know that if I say, you know, do this angle, I'm gonna get cooked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because they, they know the angles better than I know the angle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're looking at the viewfinder.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But sometimes it is reasonable to ask because, you know, maybe they've been rushing or whatever and they just didn't really think about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Maybe they were setting up all the gear while I've been kind of standing looking around. Or. Or maybe I have an idea for How I want it to flow into the next shot or, you know, whatever. And it's got to be a collaborative process, but you gotta let experts cook. There's just no other way around it. What the heck are we supposed to be talking about, do you think? Okay, you gotta. You gotta real talk. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. One of my big things, right, is I have people around me that help me, help keep me accountable, you know, and help me not just, you know, lash out emotionally. Sometimes I do it anyway. Nice. But, yeah, we've been taking some flack for making a video about a golden 5,090 at a time when other people are holding Nvidia accountable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. As if we're not.

[Linus Sebastian]

As if we didn't talk about this a month ago. As if we don't have a long history. I actually. I actually compiled a list of times LTT held Nvidia accountable. Goes back almost 10 years and includes basically every major thing. Project Greenlight, GeForce, Partner Program, when they turned off, overclocking on their laptops and blah, blah, blah. There's all kinds of things. Would it be an emotional and unnecessary response? And I'm talking to you guys as well, so probably up float Plank Chat. Can you relax? Okay. Would it be an unnecessary and emotional response for me to do a video basically going, okay, here's what Nvidia is doing right now. The title I have in mind is why is LTT silent about Nvidia's media.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Manipulation despite not having been.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then basically the video lays out the many, many not silent times. You know, back when Hardware Unboxed was being bullied by Nvidia and Nvidia was basically saying, cover RTX more favorably or we'll never see the card to you again. You know, do I have to lay this out? Because a lot of people don't seem to have a clue.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you could, but I think your tone matters a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

What if my tone was as deeply sarcastic as I have ever been in my life?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I think that wouldn't be good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, let me pitch you. Let me pitch this. Let me pitch this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, you wrote it already.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let me pitch this. Okay, this is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is. This is one of the. This is just kind of how it thinks.

[Linus Sebastian]

I haven't written it already.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so I have some notes. I have a couple notes, but I do have kind of a. I do have kind of a concept for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is sometimes just how he thinks.

[Linus Sebastian]

That I think is really funny. Okay. So of course the title would be like, why I've Stayed silent about Nvidia, and we've got, like, you know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, sorry. Nardella, in floatplane chat, said, made it a floatplane exclusive. Just so you know. And just so some of the audience knows, if he did that, it would be blood in the water like you've never seen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, sorry. Keep going.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just in case there's any questions about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so, yeah, I'm thinking, like, with the duct tape across the mouth or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so get that clickbait in there.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, amid a wave of outrage over Nvidia's manipulative and coercive behavior toward their partners in the media, many of you have been asking, why have I been silent?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

To answer that question, I guess I'll need to investigate Nvidia's history of behavior toward their partners in the media. And since I've been such an obedient little submissive for Nvidia, I'll have to learn about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so, yeah, cut that bit from.

[Linus Sebastian]

The coverage of other media outlets. Oh, this one looks good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep, yep. All right, Cut that bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. So I'm imagining we Photoshop the channel icon, and the channel I click on is actually ltt.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ah, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then we do. Did you ever watch the spooky fish episode of south park way back in the day? It's from, like, season two or something. Basically, there's a parallel universe, and. Here, hold on. Let me see if I can. Let me see if I can find this. Ah, yes, here we go. The evil versions of all the boys look exactly the same, but just have a goatee. A crappy. Yeah, a crappy beard. So I'm imagining, as I learn about all the things Nvidia has done over the years, we actually motion track, like, a crappy goatee onto, like, fake ltts onto the LTT videos that I'm, like, learning about it from. And then we do a big reveal at the end where we, like, take off the goatee, and we're like, wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was us all along.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was us all along.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not gonna get away with this, am I? I think it's really funny, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you can do it. I think you gotta drop some of the. The wounded puppy stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just want the B roll shot of me being an obedient little submissive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, okay, maybe. But I think now he wants it. It's funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're gross.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The problem is you got to keep it. You got to keep it in the funny realm. Instead of the like, why is everyone mean to me? Realm. Oh, it's the why is everyone mean to be Realm. It's just. It's not gonna go okay, I didn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Give you the next line. So when I clicked the channel, I'm like, whoa, that guy and I could be brothers. Let's see what he has to say about the most recent fiasco about limiting review samples and drivers for the RTX 5060 series. And then I kind of watch a short clip from it. I'm outraged. Anyway, so I was kind of thinking it'll be very tongue in cheek or maybe we just won't do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily because I. And we talked about this recently where, like, I think sometimes in moments like this, it makes sense to just kind of have a. A open discussion with the audience. And I think a problem that we've been having. I've been talking about this literally for years at this point. A really big problem that this niche has been having for a while. And it's weird because for many, many years this was not a problem at all. But this has become a major problem over the last few years is that if. If any reviewer is not saying the exact same thing as every single other reviewer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They are condemned. And it's everything. It's not just us. I'm not just saying us. I have seen this with other creators as well. Yeah, that sucks. That is super bad. As an audience, you should not want that. That is. That is horrible for you and it's horrible for the. For the creators.

[Linus Sebastian]

So once the video transitions into the more serious side. Coffee Kodachi. Yes, that would be the plan. You know, I've got this kind of line when I'm. When I say anything positive about Nvidia, I'm labeled a shill. When I say anything negative, I'm labeled a hater. In this polarized world, a person like me who calls out good and calls out bad ends up outcast by both camps. Is that really what we want?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think you're making it about you again. I think you should be talking about the industry.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm literally responding to people being like, how can you say anything that is different from what other people are saying right now? How can I talk about this card? Which actually, I don't even. That's the really bizarre one, is a lot of the, like, why are you covering Nvidia positively? Comments are on the video of this card where, I kid you not, the first line of it is mocking how the 5090 is overpriced. Literally, the very first line. You don't even have to, like, you don't even have to make it past the midway point in the video, which I know that most people don't. Yeah, you have to make it to the first line.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

To know that we're taking the piss.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm interested because we. We filmed a short that's not out yet at an Internet cafe here in Taiwan. And the short opens with like, what the heck is a. Because this was the original reason why we went to this place nine years ago. What is an Nvidia certified LAN center? And it ends with, effectively, they just spent a bunch of money.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I am rather certain that people are going to be like, oh, how are you covering this right now? And we're literally like, yeah, they just put their badge on the store if you, like, buy enough GPUs, and that's it. We like dope. We don't praise Nvidia's involvement at all. We're like, this is a really cool land center. And what is the Nvidia part? They bought a lot of GPUs.

[Linus Sebastian]

So then how do you get that message across without, you know, to your point, being a wounded puppy or talking about yourself? Because at the end of the day, the problem is about, like, you know, here's what we're trying to do and here's why it matters, and here's why you should probably care and why just being in camp for this company or camp against this company is really, really, really, really bad. Because it is really, really, really bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wonder as well, like, a conversation that Linus and I have been having is just that, like, I think we're looking down the barrel of PC hardware in general being a niche. That is it. It's. It's following, like, the. The population trend in most countries. It's getting older. There's not as many new entrants. I was having a conversation with some creators here, which is like, yeah, there aren't as many. There aren't that many, like, younger PC hardware creators showing up at these events.

[Linus Sebastian]

Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I was sitting around at a dinner that was like an open invite to basically any PC hardware creators here. And most people had gray in their beards, like, right? Yeah. I was like, hmm, this is interesting. It doesn't necessarily bode well for, like, the future of this niche. And one of the things that doesn't bode well for the future of any niche, unless it's a niche that's based around social interaction. And this is not one. This is a niche that is based around, ideally, objective product evaluation is drama and chaos. And it's, it's a problem because when, if you think about. If it's a video game, let's go completely outside of this niche. If it's a video game and you're a little bit interested in the video game and you go onto the subreddit for that video game and it's just on fire.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, don't do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you more or less interested in that game now?

[Linus Sebastian]

Less.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If anything, it's less like, we're not. This isn't inviting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's my problem though, and this is, this is what I keep running into, is every time I tell myself, hey, I want to be a voice of positivity, you know, I want to, I want to be excited about things. Something like terrible happens. Like, it is, it is legitimately not cool and very anti consumer. And I, I blame all of the big players, literally all of them. Amd, intel, Nvidia, your key guys. I blame all of them for the fact that naming schemes are a cluster. They are in my opinion. And this. So I'm making it very clear. This is allegedly, they are intentionally misleading.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

They intentionally obfuscate product information every launch to make it easier to sell older generation hardware. Yeah, I understand why they do it because if you can just not just. Not necessarily just older generation hardware, but, but lower end, cheaper, something less expensive. And so how am I supposed to stay positive?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like you don't, I don't. And that's the other thing. You can't be positive all the time. Like my whole, oh, if everything's on fire all the time, it's not very inviting community. Yeah, I, I'm gonna stand behind that statement. But you also just can't leave these companies doing horrible things alone. We're reviewers, we need to point it out.

[Linus Sebastian]

But, but so then back to, okay, how do I not be, how do I not address it when I make a video that isn't even like positive, it's just about a thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I'm not negative enough or I'm not on the right negative bandwagon. I'm sitting here going like, that's tough. Y' all exhausting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like I, and, and you know what? It's, it's a good comment. Right. Like Linus, you should just not care about the feedback at all and just like do your thing. Just, you know, make whatever, whatever video you want. But it's. It's. It's not. It's not that easy. It's not. It's not that simple. I. I wish that. I wish that I didn't have to care at all, you know, what people. What people think of the videos. You know, if you're just like, yeah, Linus, just like, be you and, you know, we'll check out your. Your content. It's like. But I've always been someone who obsessively reads the comments and tries to. Tries to cater to the audience. That is literally, you go to any YouTube conference, you go to any creator meetup. Hey, what's one of the keys to success? Know your audience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Interact with your audience. Understand. Understand your audience. And if the audience, you know, wants to be up on this, like, you know, scummy behavior or this, like, incredibly, you know, boring product or, you know, whatever, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because if I make a video about a boring product that's inherently a boring video, and if I don't make a video about this boring product, then I'm silent and it's like, yo. You know, I don't. And so you have this, like, conflicting feedback. None of which is right because I promise you that, you know, people are not going to tune into that. They don't. It doesn't resonate with them. Boredom doesn't sell.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I wish I had. I wish I had solutions. I wish I had solutions here. But, yeah, like, my whole comment on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The, like, oh, the Nvidia LAN center certification is just buying some GPUs. That's at the very end of the short because it's really boring. We didn't know the answer before we showed up. When we figured out the answer, we were like, oh, I mean, I guess we'll answer the question, considering the question is at the beginning of the short. But it is boring, so we will put it at the very end.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the way, I've lost the comment now, but I'm going to have to give this to you. This is my geek card. I don't get to carry it anymore because, no, I did not realize that the beards on the south park episode were a Star Trek reference.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do I have to throw this away? I didn't either.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't either.

[Linus Sebastian]

You. Oh, really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think either of us get it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get it out of here. Yeah, well, that's my. I mean, that's my room key, actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you don't need to go back.

[Linus Sebastian]

I Might need to. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

But my stuff's in there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Too bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I have. And. Oh, boy, this is gonna upset some people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have never watched the entire original series.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me neither.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've seen bits and pieces.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me, too.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, I've seen enough, you know, bits and pieces that I like very much, get the vibe I've seen full episodes even, but I have not watched the original series. I've seen, like, the one good movie with the whales or whatever, but I was a child. I was a literal child. I don't remember anything other than I think there were whales in it. Yeah.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no. Heresy. Oh, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're just talking about how you shouldn't be mad all the time. Then you just piss them all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I'll watch it. I'll watch it. I'll watch it. I've actually been. I've been watching, like, old, old media. I finally watched Mad Max 2, so I have now seen Mad Max 2.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have finally watched Highlander.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was another. And I'm going to pronounce this in a very specific way, there was another Linus that, for reasons that maybe will become clear in the future, prompted me to watch those movies. So I have now watched them. I still have not watched the third Mad Max, which is the last part of my assignment. And then hopefully, once that happens, I will be able to talk about why someone named Linus felt that I needed to be aware of the cultural significance of these movies.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm excited about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

There will be something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's all. I'll say.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that could be. Maybe something that could. I don't know. Who knows? I mean, you never know, right? The world's. World's crazy. World's crazy. Crazy bad sometimes. Crazy good sometimes. Let's have some fun, you know?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, by the way, you guys are probably wondering, like, what's up with this thing, this tower that's been what is up between us the whole time? So a lot of people, I think, didn't manage to pick up on this, even though I literally held up an invoice for it. But I bought this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

This was not a review sample or.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was, like, a major part of.

[Linus Sebastian]

That video or whatever. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, dude, you've been talking about, like, how to get it home and everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's amazing. It's amazing what people can manage to not retain in the first, like, 30 seconds of the video. I try not to let it bother me, but as you can tell, it ain't working. Anyway, so I bought this because. And again, a lot of people probably don't. Don't know this, but I skipped 40 series in effectively silent protest because no one really seemed to notice or care.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

I skipped 40 series. What, because of Nvidia's crappy pricing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think so. You're an Nvidia shell.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you. Thank you. You probably just said that I'm ready for an upgrade. And I was like, I'm sure you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Had 4,090s in every system.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, if I can get content out of it, then, hey, if I can buy, like, the. The golden 50, 90 and then I can also get some content out of it, then, yeah, you know what? Screw it. Let's do the bougiest build so I could get, like, a series of videos out of it. And, you know, that'll. That'll help to absorb some of the ridiculous cost. You have any idea how much this thing costs?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you say, like, eight grand?

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's a range? There's a range online. I found out during the handoff that our procurement team was supposed to have been given a discount code that was supposed to make it closer to the lower end of the range. We didn't get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I paid about US$8,000 for this GPU.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have you seen it in person yet? It's not worth 8,000. And adding insult to injury, the video didn't get a lot of views.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it didn't really. But, but, but, but, but the. The plan. The plan is still to. It's still to. To, you know, do other content with it, so hopefully that'll help. My plan has been disrupted a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because James had a really good idea for. Instead of me doing, like, a golden build or something like that, which, realistically, I was going to water. Cool. Anyway. So, like, what's the point of a heat sink with gold on it? But I kind of thought that would be funny in, like, a completely twisted eat the rich way is if I buy a golden gpu, literally take all the gold off of it, and then put on a water block, and then I don't know, maybe I'll have to gold plate the water block myself or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, I just. I thought that'd be funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's edgy. I'm gonna leave that out. We're good.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I'd like to hear it say.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could, like, hang it off the front of the case.

[Linus Sebastian]

From my neck?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wear it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Not the way I meant that, but yeah, for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

James had a better idea okay, what if we take it to the Tech Mall?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, have that guy or someone.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I don't want to. Okay, you know what? Sure. I'm gonna. I'm gonna tease the premise. I went back to the Tech Mall, golden GPU in hand, and I said, okay, I have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is empty.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have the Sultan of GPUs who can build me the best throne for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whoa.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we got.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, is it a competition?

[Linus Sebastian]

The quotation, slash, concept and design part is a competition.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we ultimately chose one builder.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

To build the ultimate throne. I haven't seen it yet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's in there right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's in there right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dang. Okay, nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

So theoretically, this is my new gaming PC in here. I haven't seen it yet, so we'll have that video coming. I recently became aware at the time of picking up the system of a challenge that may change the concept somewhat. But I'm gonna save that for the video. I might not get to keep my golden GPU is all I. Is all I'll say about that. So, guys, stay tuned. This is going to be. This is going to be pretty fun. I think that if the concept art is anything like the finished system, this is going to be one of the coolest systems we have ever shown on the channel. And I hope I'm not hyping this too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They must not have had a ton of time.

[Linus Sebastian]

The builders messaged me in the middle of the night saying, hey, we're still up. We're pulling an all nighter working on this system. So they went hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

They went. They went pretty cray cray. I'm. I'm pretty excited. It's gonna be. It's. It's gonna be pretty cool. I. I hope that we're allowed to just like, do cool things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Arrested.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Put in jail.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I think that's. I think one of my biggest pushes is like, we can and should stand up to bad practices from. From companies, and we have. And other creators should as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I don't think that should mean that we have to stop making this a fun niche to be in instead of a niche that just screams all of the time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think that's important to remember because if we do become a niche that just screams all the time, we are just begging for our death to be accelerated. That's it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like building gaming PCs and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's fun and cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I think we all started doing this for fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And now we're just angry, screaming Redditors and that's like not cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And we should be angry and scream sometimes. Like I am trying to. I gotta try to keep this measured because I'm not trying to say we shouldn't do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, and each creator should find their own way to stand up against really negative, crappy business practices from these companies.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Never go full Reddit though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. There's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a difference.

[Linus Sebastian]

Agreed. Hathos.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, what are we supposed to be doing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Probably sponsors or one of our 47 announcements.

[Dan]

Yeah, let's do a sponsors.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'll do. We'll do sponsors. Okay. Yeah. Wow. We have not done all of our topics yet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you today by Thermaltake. It's not a hot take that. This immersion cooled PC that Luke and Sammy checked out is pretty badass. But sorry, it's not really meant to hit the market quite yet. But what is coming soon are Thermaltake's Mine Cube AIO coolers and their Project Edge CPU fans. We went to take a look this week during Computex and some pretty neat stuff. Their patented Mine cube coolers have four. Yes my friends, four 720x724 inch LCD screens, all able to show unique visuals or real time PC info. The goal for Thermaltake here was to make it easy to customize and control what you see with their brand new software which comes with an AI tool that helps generate an entire story to play out across all the screens. Good lord. They also showed off their Project Edge fans which also have LCD screens on them that are linkable showing real time information, pictures, GIFs and more. Plus with a magnetic connection, daisy chaining them together and creating a cool seamless design is a breeze. They also showed off some new colors for their popular TR100 mini ITX case, now available in future Dusk and Gravel Sand. Do you put it on your lawn? Sorry, sorry. And they even added two brand new form factors to the line, the MicroATX TR200 and the ATX TR100 both come with a front loaded PSU design and support for a 6 inch LCD. Man, these guys really like their displays. Who can blame them though? Screens, they're kind of cool. Everything is set to come out sometime this year, so head over to thermaltake.com and keep an eye out for when they're available. Thanks again to Thermaltake for being the sole sponsor of this week's special Computex 2025 edition of the WAN show. Or as we Call it the Taiwan Show. Haha. No, nothing. Wow. Not even. Thanks, Andy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can do the Final Fantasy one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Please don't. Please don't. That won't be necessary. Okay, what do you want to talk about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, that's it? We just have one sponsor?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. Do we want to do some of the announcements we can do?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, let's do whatever Dan tells us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's so many of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, you're in charge.

[Dan]

Why don't you get through a couple announcements and then we'll just try and go through all of these topics. Because there's a couple announcements.

[Linus Sebastian]

An LTT Store first. Dan, you're going to have to click links and show things, I guess. Are you. Are you on it? He's on it. He's on it. Like a bonnet. Like a. Like a hood. Like a hoodie.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ah, that's pretty good.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're launching a run of our original hoodie blanks for purchase for the very first time. Custom made with 100% cotton for comfort and a French terry interior to keep things breathable. Because we couldn't find a hoodie out there, that felt like how we think a hoodie should feel. Available now in black and brick, a darker red. You can get yours today at LMG GG Blank hoodie. We are also announcing pre tariff pricing returning to LTT Store us for commuter backpacks and magnetic cable management this weekend on the US site Global Customers. You are already getting pre tariff pricing after conversion. So technically this is also for you. So commuter bags and magnetic cable management. Now's a great time to pick those up. If you are in the US. We've got this. Yeah, we've got that. All on lttstore.com if you guys want to use one of those items to send a merch message. Hey, merch messages are the way to interact with the show. We don't do twitch bits or super chats. We like that if you throw your money at the screen, you actually get something in return when you send a merch message. So all you got to do is go to lttstore.com, add something to your cart and you'll see a box when we're live that will give you a space to type up a merch message. It'll go to producer Dan, who I guess is going to have to turn on his own camera. There it is. Nice. It doesn't work as well when I can't turn him off while he's still waving.

[Dan]

I know, I know. It's terrible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you Got to do it to yourself.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kind of breaks the vibe anyway. So it'll go to producer Dan Dan, who will reply to it or send it to someone to help answer your question. Or we'll even curate it for me and Luke. So, Dan, do you want to hit us with a couple merch messages to show the folks how it works?

[Dan]

I'm not entirely sure I have any tonight.

[Linus Sebastian]

None, really. This is what happens when I don't mention the merch for the first hour of the show. All right, why don't we jump into another topic then, shall we?

[Dan]

Yeah, I jump into another topic. Something might have failed on the back end.

[Linus Sebastian]

Should we talk about something really cool? Yeah, let's talk about German courts getting it right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is awesome. Do you want to read a topic for a change?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. I gotta find it first. Give me one sec.

[Linus Sebastian]

Our merge message is broken. Is that what you've been tappity tapping at?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I've been tappity tapping in a lot of other things.

[Dan]

We're back on now. All good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. Everything okay?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. District court in Cologne has ordered Netflix to reimburse a customer €200 for failing to get the customer's consent for subscription price increases. Netflix increased its prices by over 50% between December 2017 and May of 2022. The price increases themselves were not condemned by the court. Rather the lack of informed consent, that's the particular issue. A ruling from the Berlin regional court in 2021 found a provision in Netflix's user agreement that granted the company the to right increase prices at will and without the subscribers agreement was unfair and thus invalid. Yeah, everything you sign is not technically binding if it's just bs, which is weird, but probably good because nobody reads that stuff anyways. A higher court upheld this ruling two years later. While Netflix has presented German users with a dialogue box, I guess, to agree to more recent price increases, it appears that this may not actually track.

[Linus Sebastian]

That they may not actually track it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just assume that the user agreed. If they don't unsubscribe from the service. Whoa. This means that if you didn't use Netflix for a couple months, or your kid clicked through the dialog on your account and you never saw it, you'll be billed at the increased rate without consent. Yeah. Interesting. And that's very common, just to be clear. Not necessarily the kid thing. I don't know about that. It might be, but the. Dude, the people just having accounts that they don't use is like huge.

[Linus Sebastian]

The kid thing is definitely a thing. I promise you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'M not surprised. The case clears the way for other German users to file complaints. And the consumer rights magazine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't even try.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stiff tongue. Warren Test.

[Linus Sebastian]

You tried.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, butchered that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, the entire comment section is just that now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's better than it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Luke, are you not even German? With a last name like La Freniere.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, we have a Nvidia box on screen. We might as well take some flak off.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, and I'm actually like, just as German as I am French. Life is strange. Anyways, in a separate case, the Hanover Administrative Court has confirmed a judgment stating that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, hold on, hold on. Let's talk about this first one first. Okay. This is sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yo. It's great.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is awesome. Yeah, yeah. Why do you just get to unilaterally. I do understand legally why you are allowed to unilaterally increase the price of a subscription service. Because technically every month is a new contract. So you can just. I don't know. Yeah, it's a new contract now. And so if you stay subscribed, you agree to the new contract. No, that shouldn't be how things work. And if you, if you want, if you want to negotiate a new contract, in my opinion, you should have to cancel everyone's contract and then sign them up again. You should have to go through the whole signup process again. I guarantee you, if that was happening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stop doing that immediately.

[Linus Sebastian]

Companies would immediately not do this ever again. They would not raise prices. They would set a price that is actually sustainable and then they would not touch it. For the love of God, not touch it. And that doesn't mean that they can't increase pricing. They absolutely can, but it would be on future signups. So if you get grandfathered in at a low rate, if you get a low rate, or you get a promotional rate or you get whatever, then that's it. Like, you got it. That was the deal that you signed up for. If they change the deal after, then that literally isn't the deal you signed up for. Quite literally. This is so validating because I feel like I've talked about this so many times, I freaking love it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, there's. There's immense lock in from payment processors, but it's not even. Because it's that hard to, on a technical level, swap in and swap out payment processors. The problem is that all your legal payment agreements are in that other payment processor. And Stripe talks about how they can handle migrations and stuff, but it's really not that clean. And you start actually talking about it It's a lot more complicated and yada yada yada, and it's easier in some scenarios and blah, blah, blah. But there's things that different payment processors will do to try to increase this level of lock in. And nobody really changes the payment processors pretty much ever if they have subscriptions. Because the chance that these people won't come back, not just because they might have forgotten that they have the subscription, because you're re asking them if it's worth it. Friction and just re asking them if it's worth it, you will lose a ton of people.

[Linus Sebastian]

A ton. I love it. By the way, we did get a detail wrong in that VPN story last week. Apparently.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

When they said they didn't acquire the existing like customers, they actually didn't acquire the monthly subscribers either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'm a lot more okay with it. So they had a bunch of free people who were obfuscated in the P and L by the paying customers. And when they bought it, they didn't get the paying customers and weren't told about the free people. And the free deals were available through like third party websites and stuff. So we're like not obviously apparent get them at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They should have had no users.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So.

[Dan]

Hello?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, hi, Dan. Back.

[Dan]

Who, who dropped? Was it me or you?

[Linus Sebastian]

You, I think.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are we, are we gonna come back?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Dan]

There you are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because if it, if it was us that dropped, you would have kept streaming, right?

[Dan]

I thought I kept streaming and just lost you guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, cool. Oh, no.

[Dan]

All right, have fun.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are we back?

[Linus Sebastian]

We're back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're back.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, cool. That's pretty neat. Hey guys. Sup? Cool. So apparently the last thing they heard was zero users. So long story short. Yeah. Basically by. By cutting those people off who in their mind they were doing a favor to, by allowing them to continue to use the service, they hadn't even acquired users for. For free. They were like being bros. I don't like how any of this went down. The whole thing is like sucky.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that is more bad on the company that sold.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Versus the company that actually acquired the vpn. And I. It adds some nuance to the situation that I felt we should definitely follow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. All right, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is unrelated to the topic, but if we want to correct things from last week, I have something to correct as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, what now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had said this is important.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like I gotta come true with the audience here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Come true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Is that not a phrase? Sound the same.

[Linus Sebastian]

So why don't you correct me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is there something close to that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Be real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe that's it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Come clean.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Come clean. Come clean. Yeah, I gotta come clean with the audience here.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not how that works. The cleanup is after.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways. I lied last week.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. Not intentionally, but I was wrong.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know I was making fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan hit his doesn't know thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I said that I had a character in Final Fantasy 6.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I only thought I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

You thought you had a character?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I've done some.

[Linus Sebastian]

You don't have any characters. Are you high? The whole game is like that. You have tons of characters.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, and I. I don't even remember their name. Because I renamed them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tara.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There we go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tara Branford.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

You Imperial Magitech.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When do they talk about last names? How do you know their last name?

[Linus Sebastian]

Why would I not?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think I've ever seen their last name.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why do you think it's called in the whole game? Castle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, yeah, sure, fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what do you think Edgar's last name is, smart guy?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Branford's Castle.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When did they talk about her last name?

[Linus Sebastian]

Pathetic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, well, I renamed some characters while I was playing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Literally. Don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just have to like, know the canon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like my favorite game of all time. So I just like, know things like this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I had renamed some characters, so when he asked me if I had Terra Tara, I thought I did, but I had a different character.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I did not have. What character did you even have?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't sets her or something. How could you possibly know the names?

[Linus Sebastian]

How could you possibly think the old Bushido guy with a mustache. Oh. Is named Tara?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not the old Bushido guy. You're wrong about your own game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Huh?

[Linus Sebastian]

How could you possibly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I only know that because that's one of the characters I didn't rename.

[Linus Sebastian]

How could you possibly think. The white haired gambler. Dude, his name's Tara.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Honestly, I never ever had them in my party, ever. And I forgot anything about them at all. And I had just gotten them.

[Linus Sebastian]

But isn't the iconic opera scene and everything and like the. What do you mean you just got them? No, you got them. In the world of Balance.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, no, no. In the world of ruin, I had just gotten them and I never had them in my party, ever. In World of Balance.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't believe I just brain farted. I know who sets her as. I just. Look, before the show started, okay, I had to go back to My room to get my headphones. I literally went up instead of down and then literally didn't realize it and tried my key card on someone else's room before I went, oh, my God, I'm on completely the wrong floor. Just to give you some idea of where my brain is. Is it. Is that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But yeah, I have. I have Tara now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you sure? Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Actually in the part hair white.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

How can you play? How can you look at characters for this long and not know what they look like? Do you even. Are you even playing the game or are you just having an AI do it? Isn't it, like, it should count pink or something if he doesn't know what the name.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When you have her go trance, it's definitely like white and pink.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, I know the Blitzes, but I don't know the characters names or what they look like. There you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can, like, do the blitz inputs by memorization.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love that. I literally lend him a SNES controller to play this game so he could have the authentic experience. Experience. And an adapter. And he went. And he took his hand. He went, I know the blitzes. And he used the arrow keys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I played with this Nest controller at home a little bit. I didn't want to take it traveling, so I don't want to break it.

[Linus Sebastian]

It doesn't matter. They're cheap, dude. It doesn't matter. Okay, well, you could also just not carry it. That's fine. You can just play with your keyboard like a pleb. Truthfully, the first time I actually beat the game because I didn't beat it when I owned it as a kid. I was a kid and I was too dumb. And then I lost my Super Nintendo when I moved between my parents houses. I didn't have it anymore. And so the first time I actually beat the game was on ZS NES on a computer. So I 100% used a controller. A keyboard for that. So whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not that bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. It's actually way easier to input the blitzes on a keyboard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I could see that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. For whatever reason, like, the most powerful ones are incredibly easy, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's like going a circle.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a remaster thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they're. They're much harder on the controller.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like I said, they're really easy on a keyboard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But one of them is literally just one way around the circle. The other one's the other way around the circle.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but if you. If you get pressing it or no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'S not the other way around. The circle. It's just the continuation of the circle.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you get pressing it wrong. Like, if you accidentally start at an angle instead. It's a lot easier to screw up on, like, a D pad that literally doesn't have diagonals. Right, Right. Because it's just across D pad. So you have to, like, you have to nail it and you will screw it up for. I have. I have been annihilated because I, like, kind of screwed up a blitz input. The remaster really screws up a lot of the balance of the original game. Like the. The sword techs or whatever Bushido abilities they were called. Sword tech. That wasn't a brain fart on the original. The Bushido abilities, you can just use anyone you want now. It's like, you had to wait before. So if you were playing in the active battle mode, you'd be, like, getting hit while you waited for him to, like, queue up Quadra Slice. Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, like, I never really run him anyways. The weird thing for me right now is I have way harder of a time with, like, the random encounters than I do with bosses. I wipe bosses, like, no problem. Often like 2, 3 turns in done took very little damage, if nothing. And then I'll just die to random encounters by getting, like, one shot out of nowhere, like, first move, random encounter. Character's dead.

[Linus Sebastian]

Huh?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? And this has, like, happened multiple times?

[Linus Sebastian]

Have you considered that you may be a bad gamer?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have. I've never lost to a boss in the game. So far, I have party wiped multiple times. Just like random encounter trash. Which is so annoying because it's less likely that I saved recently.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wild. All right, why don't we talk about the other cool thing? In a separate case, the Hanover Administrative Court has confirmed a judgment stating that cookie banners must not be designed to encourage users to consent and that website operators must offer a clearly visible reject all button on the first level of cookie consent banners. If the banner includes an accept all button.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's huge for me.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is so cool. The judgment came after Lower Saxony's Data Protection Officer demanded a redesign of a media company's cookie banner because it did obtain effective, informed and voluntary consent before setting cookies and processing personal information. The company disagreed and claimed that the Data Protection Authority was not responsible for monitoring legal provisions concerning cookies. The court found that rejecting cookies on the banner in question was much more complicated than accepting them, and that the banner used misleading wording such as optimal user experience and accept and close. While the term Consent was completely missing. That's super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's just awesome because like, sometimes, oh man, there are so many bad cookies. Sometimes there are cookies that do enhance website experiences.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe we would be. No, go ahead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Almost never. Do I care, though, and I just reject everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it's still. But it's still. This is so. I love it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's great.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hate that it's only gonna be in Germany.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But hopefully, you know these types of things, hopefully they. They bleed out over time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I hope so. I mean, Apple is certainly doing absolutely everything in their power to slow roll any of the antitrust and regulatory stuff that's hit them over the last little bit. Man, Fortnite is back on the App Store and it's pretty crazy. Our discussion question for this topic is, is Apple the most childish corporation on the planet or does that award go to someone else? Because, wow. Have they ever engaged in some like, peak level malicious compliance over this whole third party payment processors on the App Store thing? It's almost like the only reason they ever cared about any of it was so that they wouldn't have to compete and they could take their enormous cut acting as the sole monopolistic payment processor on this platform.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like there's gotta be worse ones. This is the one that's like most our order.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's just hilarious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

After Apple lost the court case regarding in App third party purchases, EPIC submitted Fortnite for approval to the App Store. Apple. This is so funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is so Apple too. Oh, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apple refused to either accept or decline the application, leaving it in limbo. Because if they declined it, well then, you know, they'd get in trouble. But like, I don't know, do we have to accept it? I mean, we're looking at it. I don't know. U.S. district Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who by the way, is an absolute chad from everything that I've seen about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Seems like it wrote in an order.

[Linus Sebastian]

That Apple has to accept or decline the application. And this is a quote. Apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing based. Apple has since accepted the application and Fortnite is now back on the App Store.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Huge.

[Linus Sebastian]

For real though, actually like super. Okay. I feel like I always have to disclaim this, right? Because not a fan of everything Tim Sweeney does. All right. But this genuinely benefits every.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, this was massive developer. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

For iOS.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'll also give them a shot. I don't like Fortnite. I think I've played it one time ever and did not enjoy it and never played it again.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, in fairness, Fortnight changes a lot, so you might like it more now. I think they're doing probably less where you can make all kinds of new game modes and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. Look, the point is either way, the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Point is be open minded. Okay? Try anything twice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's currently number one in adventure games on the App Store and already has over 20,000 ratings and it's been up for like days. So clearly doing pretty well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Jamesh says yes. Sweeney is doing this for the future of games, which is like his company's future, you know, I think a lot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of it is like personal vendetta. We're just benefiting from it, which is great.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a huge win for everyone. And realistically, he's one of the few company leaders who has the money, and not just the money, but the absolute iron balls to do this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because Apple is a vindictive company. If you step out of line, very Nvidia esque, they will never engage with you again. To Nvidia's credit, they actually do let bygones be bygones. Eventually. They. They. We were. We were blackballed for two years over the hardware unboxed thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we'll see.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we are officially un. Blackballed now. We could be blackballed again, but I'm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really wondering how much of it was just like clear the field before 5,000 series comes out and then who cares after that?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I think it was more a specific person who was s. Hurt. Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's. We'll see how things go in the next like six months. I'm reserving judgment until. Yeah, there's been some bad that I don't even think is not super public yet. It's not mine to release. Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah. Like real bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

More. Okay, why don't I talk about something good while he types that up? SteamOS moves one step closer to a wider release with a new update. Valve has released SteamOS 3.7.8, which comes with official support for third party PC handhelds. This is so cool. So you could just go install it on your Ally or your Aya Neo or whatever. Along with a bevy of other upgrades. This is the first version of the software to offer an official recovery image with explicit support for installation on devices with AMD hardware. Okay, so not just anything just yet. And an NVMe drive, although valve does specify that it is targeted towards handheld devices and is not final. So you can basically install it on like whatever, as long as you've got AMD hardware and an NVME drive. There's also explicit installation instructions for the Legion Go and Rog Ally. Is it the year of the Linux desktop? Actually though this time this is so cool. Other upgrades include new Mesa graphics drivers, base Bluetooth MIC support in desktop mode, still no gaming mode, battery management tools, and the ability to turn a Steam Deck. Turn on a Steam deck via a Bluetooth controller, which was previously only possible on the oled. So this is super cool if you have just like a Steam machine in your living room. Remember when they used to call them Steam machines? So if you just have one as like a, like a living room console, you can just use your Bluetooth controller to be like boop, turn my Steam. Ah, I'm so excited. I'm so excited and I'm excited for competition. Look at the way Microsoft has allegedly woken up and is like, you know, allegedly partnering with asus on the Ally 2 and you know, trying to make Windows a better like gaming platform. Like, let's go competition. It's always good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Hell yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Literally competition is always better than not competition. Trying to think if there's a time the competition was worse. I guess if you had like a super fragmented market and then like, like. Okay, I think there's a, there's probably a middle ground.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Businesses.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a middle ground. No, no. I'm even thinking businesses. Okay, so, so imagine a world, okay, you don't want there to be one bank or one insurance company because that's terrible because then there's no competition. But you also don't want there to be 10,000 banks and 10,000 insurance companies because those will be very small companies and those types of institutions need scale in order to absorb the sometimes large one time losses that they can experience. There's a middle ground.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think there's some debate there on the bank side of things.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, dude, when you have like a thousand tiny banks, it's much easier for there to be a bank run because it can be in like a very localized.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When you have Omega banks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well that's what, that's. No, this is bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They cause recessions due to bad practices.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm saying, I'm saying that more is not always better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure, but you're not saying that infinite competition of infinite parties is good. You're saying that competition is always good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that what I said? I don't remember my exact wording.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You said competition is always good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I said it's always better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. But that doesn't have to mean that there are thousands and thousands of players competing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. I'm just saying there's a middle ground of like, like, like peak competition goodness. That's all I'm saying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think we do this as a company. I know I do this. So I'm not trying to exclude myself. I think sometimes we're like, we get. And this is why I say I don't know all the time. So I'm. I'm 100 on board with this. We're so worried about people just taking crap that we say and twisting it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We run around in so many circles that we end up losing the plot partway through. Oh man.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're just saying black and red's a cool color combination. That's all. That's all we. We like it for gaming PC.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who made their uniforms? Aren't they like still around?

[Linus Sebastian]

Hugo Boss?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I think. And super famous.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. I don't want to get that wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't want to get very fashionable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nazi uniforms. I think it was Hugo Boss. Yes. Hugo Boss apologized for Nazi past. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yep, There he goes. Yeah. So Hugo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hugo Boss, by the way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I saw it. Like there's no belief here. I saw it, he showed me. And he's gonna deal with it in his own way or whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

So how can they be actually that stupid? Yeah, I think is the question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But this is my like, so I don't know, man. We'll see.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'll see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Over the next while.

[Linus Sebastian]

When I was digging up all the time times that we've criticized Nvidia in the past, I came across some stuff that I had forgotten about. And one of them was the an LMG clip where I. I basically came out and I was like, I no longer believe they are playing 4D chess. I believe they're idiots past. Linus Smart guy beard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw that. And yeah, I saw that. And genuinely, like kind of laughed because it was just so dumb.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it. Yeah, yeah. And like the timing of it, it's terrible. Holy, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, more good news though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Remember that NAS company that I invested in?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Remember. Remember how people were like hating on the launch and the comments were all like, this is pointless. No one would ever buy this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you're excited about this, you should feel bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Remember how they had a really, really great launch and lots of people, people gave them a bunch of money? Want to hear one of the cool things that they are already doing with that money?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Zfs. Any raid sponsored by S Tech. So that's the. The NAS company that I made the small investment in. This is so cool. Earlier this week. Dude, I've. I have wanted to talk about this so hard because I have known for a while because they basically immediately when their, when their first couple days of sales were bonkers, they were like, oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My God, let's do something.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's stuff that we had on the roadmap for like, like the future that we could just immediately start fixing because there's these projects that are just like super cool but just not funded so people can't work on them and we could just. We could just do this cool stuff. Dude. Oh, I've wanted to talk about this. Basically since they are freak, they freaking went out from COVID Whatever, whatever Blue cover, whatever it's called when like the, when the, when like a startup stops being stealth, unstealth mode, whatever there's a term for it doesn't matter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The point is. Earlier this week, Aztec, the creators of Hexos investment disclosure, introduced to the world ZFS Anyraid Developed by Clara Inc. Sponsored by Eshtek ZFS Anyraid will introduce two new pool layouts, Anyraid Mirror and Anyraid Z1. Anyraid Mirror will be available first and will ensure that all data will be written to two different disks in pools of more than two disks of differing sizes. So this is a little bit out of order, but the point is you can RAID disks in zfs. So RAID Z not like hardware, RAID like software, RAID Z like zfs. So you can create pools with differing disks and you were always able to do that, but there would be a huge loss in total capacity. You would basically go lowest common denominator. So if I had a 10 terabyte drive and a 2 terabyte drive and I raid Z1 them or whatever. Whatever. I think technically raid Z1 is not a mirror, even though it kind of operates like a mirror. If you just have two drives, don't worry about it. The point is, if I used them, I would get a total of 4 terabytes of usable capacity out of my 12 terabytes. That's not a great experience. Any RAID Z1 will take the same concept and features as ZFS RAID Z1 so where you can lose any one drive and it will add support for mixed drive sizes. This is so cool. So how much space can we gain? Here's some examples. Okay, we have a pool with a four terabyte drive, a six terabyte drive and an eight terabyte Drive. Okay, so we are. This is some, this is some mix and match here. All right. Okay, check this out. Wait, I can't screen share. Dan, Dan, can you show them the table?

[Dan]

On it.

[Linus Sebastian]

So in a in mirror. So this is a traditional mirror. I can't see that, Andy. In a traditional mirror we would get 10 terabytes only out of our total. What is this? 12 plus 820 out of our 24 terabytes. That is, that is an awful amount of storage to give up to parity. Okay. In new, any RAID mirror we get 12 terabytes. Okay. That's not a lot more. But if you can see on our table that Dan maybe has on the thing, I can't tell. You can see on our table that if we add a four terabyte drive, we actually get half of the capacity, whereas with the old mirror there would be no change. Okay, so a little bit exciting. Here's where things get really cool. In RAID Z1 versus any RAID Z1, our pool capacity goes from literally half, okay, 12 terabytes to 16 terabytes out of our initial 24. And then if we add 4 terabytes we get 2 and a half terabytes instead of. Okay, actually that works out a little bit better on the other one. The point is more. The point is more. When is it coming? They won't even say soon. But they will keep the community updated as the project progresses and hits key milestones. I am pretty excited. Getting more of your user experience out of Mishmash of Drives is a very consumer friendly feature that has pretty much no benefit whatsoever to enterprise customers who are just always using matching drives, which is why this has never been worked on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And just like how a lot of people were like, oh, like as a home lab enthusiast, this isn't necessarily something that I would want.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This caters to not necessarily home lab enthusiasts as well. Where it's like, this is just what I've got and I want to make something out of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So this is, in my opinion, this is a very like informed thing for them to back early.

[Linus Sebastian]

Super.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it makes a lot of sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Super cool. It's for people who are just, you know, building their first jellyfin server.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who are, who are old desktops that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have been in the garage for a few years that have drives in it. Let me throw these in here and do what I can.

[Linus Sebastian]

Super excited for this. And I'm super excited to see them taking that initial money that they got from their, from their like Alpha, you know, hey, Trust us. We're going to do cool stuff with this. Like launch and then actually doing cool stuff with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just because I'm starting to see this already. No, we are not saying that nothing else can do this.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. But zfs. This was not a feature of zfs. And so that's what's really exciting is you get all the zfs goodness. But. But also mix and match. Awesome. Awesome. Yes, I know. Drobo existed ages ago. That's not the point. The point is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And there's. Yeah. Other ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cfs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One thing. We have until your cutoff that you defined. 18 minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have until your face. 18 minutes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm good. Whatever. I'm already checked out of the hotel.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nerd.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can go a little longer. We'll go a little longer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I will. We'll do our best.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'll do our best. We always do our best. Hey, do you want to. Do you want to go through the. The. The Computex Roundup from someone. Not Computex, apparently. It's supposed to be wacky stuff. So, Dan, do you want to just, like, pop them up on screen and sync with us? We'll go through an order.

[Dan]

Yeah. Depends how fast.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, so I'm going to click the first one. It's a Pulsar X noctua mouse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. 100%. I saw this and just thought someone was trolling with, like, AI models. I didn't think this was real.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. What? I saw it in person. It's real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are they actually going to, like, sell these or was it part of real.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you not understand, sir?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That thermaltake oil case thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They've had a different. Dramatically different iteration of it every year. I don't know if that's ever going to be for sale. It's. I love going and seeing what they're currently doing. I don't know if they're ever going to sell it. We'll see.

[Linus Sebastian]

It weighs about 20 grams more than the. The regular. I forget what model of mouse this is. Feynman or something like that. Hold on. Yeah, the Feynman mouse. The weight distribution felt a little different to me as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's got a fan in it, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So it's probably gonna feel a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

I definitely had some ideas for a V2. Right now the fan is just on. And I was like, oh, it'd be kind of cool if it had, like, a moisture sensor so that it only turns on if your hands are actually sweaty. Cause sometimes I'm a pretty warm boy. But other times, you know, in the middle of the night in particular, I get to be a pretty cold boy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you have PWM it? Basically, you know those, like the. The single button that just cycles through mouse sensitivities.

[Linus Sebastian]

It may be controllable. I'm not sure actually. Look, it is controllable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so it's controllable, but it's always on. Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, it's pretty cool. It's pretty light. It's like 60 something grams. It's not bad, considering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty cool. Okay, next up, 3,000 watt PSUs. More than one brand was showing off power supplies that were 3,000 watts or more. Basically. AI. All right, let's move on in. When unveiled, whatever this is, they say this case is trophy inspired. It is over a meter tall and will support full size 50 series GPUs. I should certainly hope so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Imagine it didn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. Inwin's back with another Signature case.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

They do that. And apparently it weighs like 40 kilos or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't, I don't remember the number. Don't quote me on that. But apparently it weighs a lot. I was talking to someone from our team who saw this in person. I didn't actually catch this short circuit. The thermal rate frozen creator. Okay. Okay. This actually looks extremely legit, dude. AMD Strix Halo is, I swear, the coolest CPU in the last, I don't know, 10 years. I. I can't. I can't think of anything cooler in that time frame. Yeah, Apple's M Silicon. Really cool. But like in the PC space on the PC side.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, I interpreted it that way.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is so cool. Like, that is a gaming PC in Alex's hands that is capable of like playing Black Myth. Wukong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the fact that Thermal right. Is getting into PCs. I mean, obviously they know the cooling for PCs, so like, why not? But this looks awesome. Oh, I. I don't know. I guess investment disclosure, since Framework also makes a strict Halo thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like, that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I don't know the right way to handle this because that seems dumb. Like, why am I bringing up Framework if. All I'm saying is that something else looks awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's good.

[Linus Sebastian]

But yeah, it's good for Framework. But is that actually good for the audience? I'm not 100% sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably not. But it's good for Framework and it's the law. Got them. I love it. You legally have to advertise for Framework. I think that's hilarious. I genuinely think that's very funny. Like, I. That is thoroughly entertaining to me.

[Linus Sebastian]

In other news. Hey, do you need a monitor on your CPU cooler?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because there's a lot of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, is this real? The first one? The first one's not real. I don't think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It looks like a tablet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, for. Is this real? Is The Sigma tech r1? Do you know, Dan?

[Dan]

No idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

It slots into the Sigma Tech pump by sliding into what looks like an alien's shoulder socket. Okay. Apparently it's real. I did not catch this. That is. Wow. That. Boy, that is something that makes Cooler Masters and Thermaltakes look downright reasonable. Lian Li also has a curved display on their aio. Check this out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, Sequel to the all screen PC. Let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guess. I. I just. I think the. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to be. I don't want to be too negative after spending a significant part of the show talking about how we need to be more positive, but stuff like that makes me feel like we're running out of ideas. I mean, maybe it's just not for me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Didn't all of Computex kind of feel like we're running out of ideas this year?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They sure did.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was a. This was Noctvist Booth was super cool. Their evaporative thermosyphon cooler, if it performs anywhere near, like, what they think they can achieve, it will be a remarkable piece of kit at a astronomical price, probably. So, like, there's some innovation there. Seasonic I liked, but, like, basically they're just like, fixing someone else's problem, you know, so it's hard to get excited about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, this card. No one can afford. Won't blow up anymore if I add.

[Linus Sebastian]

This thing that isn't out yet. Yeah, cool. Asus has an ergonomic keyboard with a split in the middle. Okay, that is not an ergonomic keyboard. That is just a keyboard that separates in the middle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I think people do still categorize that as ergonomic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because of your shoulder rotation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it's not ergonomic in all ways, but it's ergonomic for your shoulder rotation. Keyboards like this have existed for a long time. There was many of them at the show.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll allow it. The Silverstone retro case is legitimately cool. Okay. This was actually cool, but it's not a new idea, that's for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Specifically an old one. It looks sick, though. I genuinely really like It. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And unlike the first gen one, it gave more thought to like cooling and putting modern hardware in it and. Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, you can, you can really put a top of the line gaming machine in this and build a sleeper without doing any of the actual, like, fabrication work of building a sleeper. This looks amazing. I wonder if this would be a theft deterrent. Like, if you did up. If you'd like, did up your setup, like retro style and put like, like, if you like 3D printed like a bigger bezel on your monitor and like used. Used like, like beige key caps on like a sick mechanical keyboard and like, like, if you did it up, would anybody steal it? That. Okay, hold on a second, hold on a second. Could there be a way for us to like, social experiment this? Could. Can you like, you know how, like, bait cars, they can kind of like bait people into trying to steal them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bait a whole computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bait a house because someone would have to like, go into it and then we have to like, see if they take the computer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Work with Mark Rober.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, is that a thing? There's got to be a YouTube channel that, like, does this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mark Rober did the porch pirate thing for years.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, that's porch pirating, though. I mean, not every porch pirate is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just gonna, like, way significantly more common.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea. I think baiting someone to break into a house is probably pretty hard to predict.

[Linus Sebastian]

Gilmore D in floatplane chat says whoever did that bait would be a master. All right, on that note, move on, PC World. Scented thermal paste. Our question from the writer is, would Elijah eat this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I feel like if you paid him like 20 bucks, I think you'd send it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Scented thermal paste. Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're definitely not out of ideas. We've. We've started scenting thermal paste.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna close that topic. Cool. We've got an announcement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not, it's. It's not like, innovation is impossible. This isn't new. But like, we saw fractal go with those. The, the, like wooden. And that dramatically changed the case industry.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. That new antec.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There is still. The new antecase is interesting. Like, there's. There is stuff that people can do.

[Linus Sebastian]

I meant it as wood, like the fractal one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hmm. Oh, I thought you meant the. Did they do a collab?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they did. It's wood on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Because, like, you know, trends. Yeah. This week on floatplane, we've got a ton of behind the scenes from our time at Computex. And some more fire truck slash April Fools behind the scenes as well. With a new why is wan late episode, we're supposed to watch the clip. So I guess I'll click on it now.

[Dan]

Dan, I can't really show a floatplane clip because I have to log in and things like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can't show a floatplane clip. You'd have to log in. Well, I think the question, Dan, that is on all of our minds is why are you not logged into floatplane? Yeah, don't you care?

[Dan]

Let me just download it and then add it to the streaming software so that I can show it for four seconds.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. I can't tell if his voice was coming through to them, but if it wasn't, it was loaded with passive aggression.

[Dan]

Oh, no way. Float planes are actually really fast, so that took, like no time at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Dan]

Good job, Luke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got him.

[Dan]

Here you go. What is it? This button. I know what I'm doing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Shut up.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got zero. I got zero.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love that it works.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's so cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty cool. We will also have Secret Shopper Part 4, the finale, which will be available next week, up early on Float plane. So go check it out. And then we have a final ROG rig reboot reminder. There are only a couple of days left to get your subs submissions in. For ROG Rig reboot, we're picking three winners. Two from North America, one international. To be flown to our studio to build a PC with me on camera. You just got to submit a video showing us why you need a rig reboot. Whether your system's unable to keep up with your workflow or you can't run demanding games or it's just absolutely cooked. We need all the deets. This is a competition that rewards creativity and originality. So make sure your video is unique and not like up past submission. Yes, we will know. 30 to 59 seconds. Show us your current setup, tell us why we should pick you, and again, be creative. Submissions are open until 4:45pm Pacific Time, Sunday, May 25. And Dan is going to post the submission link in all of the various chats.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Merch messages.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, good Lord. We haven't talked. Oh, we did talk about VO3. Okay, good. Oh, yeah, we should do a couple merch messages. Dan, want to hit us with that?

[Dan]

Yeah, I'm sure thing. I've got a couple here. Dll. I'm a late joiner to the LTD cult about four to five years ago. So this may have been asked before, but what are your favorite colors? Is Linus's pink or orange?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if anybody has ever asked that before.

[Dan]

I have never had what are your colors merch message before?

[Linus Sebastian]

A favorite colors? I don't know, maybe like, like a cool, like a cool bluey green. It depends. There's certain things that I like some colors and there's certain things that I like other colors. I'm painting my bike pink. Well, I'm trying to paint my bike pink.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Attempting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Historically I was always red, red and black. These days I've been an enjoyer of browns and greens more.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Brown is an unusual favorite color. Like, it's certainly like a decor trend. Yeah, everything tan and brown, but I don't know if any. I don't know if even those people say yes, my favorite color is tan and brown.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like I bought some, some shorts recently that are brown.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think they look nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but brown, like again, people buy brown shorts but because they look inoffensive. I don't know if they buy brown.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Shorts because brown is Minecraft block is a cool aesthetic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Slimming, you know, it's slimming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You gotta wear the brown pants and a green shirt. Just embrace it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. Dan.

[Dan]

Hey, Taiwan show. What's the best non AI tech you spotted at Computex this year? P.S. linus, have you learned nothing from the last time you played with Gold? Also, I'm charged shipping on gift cards now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, the last, the last time I played with gold, the controller appreciated a lot. That ended up being a tremendous investment. Pun intended. Get it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think I saw anything on the show floor that said it was AI enabled that I was excited about at all. One funny thing that I ran into though. Did you see the AI golf booth?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was a big AI golf booth. I haven't talked to any. I, I've. I've talked to a bunch of people that saw it. I haven't talked to a single person that saw it work. I saw them working on it for a pretty considerable amount of time. We were standing there with Sammy trying to wait to see if they're going to get it working. And then they, they claim they got it working. They had someone go up to like test it and they took a really long time trying to get the golf ball and the tee. They finally got it. They whiffed hard. Took a really long time to set it up. Like they missed the screen. They hit the ball, but they missed the whole screen, which is like almost everywhere the ball could have gone. They took A really long time. Setting it up on the tee again, hit it again, Whiffed the screen again, and then the system stopped working again and we just laughed. That kind of encapsulated a lot of the AI enabledness that at least I saw at the show. But I was only on the show floor for one day, so maybe. Maybe you saw something. I doubt it, but maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Boy, my favorite thing is probably I'm going to go with the boiling cooler. I like cool cooling stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was AI enabled.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that wasn't AI enabled was what they asked. Yeah, so I'm going to go with the boiling cooler. That looks sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, Kind of related to AI Signal is blocking Windows Recall, Microsoft's AI enabled constant logging of everything that you on your computer. Signal messenger is warning users that the privacy of their communications is being threatened by Windows Recall, Microsoft's AI tool that will Screenshot index and store pretty much everything a user does. Every few seconds. They have updated Signal for Windows to by default block the ability of Windows to screenshot the app. Signals Move reduces the possibility of Recall indexing private messages, but doesn't eliminate it because users can change the setting within the desktop app, for example, if they want to make use of accessibility tools like screen readers. Signal officials note that Microsoft has made many adjustments to Recall in response to critical feedback over the last year. But Recall still places any content displayed within privacy protected apps like Signal at risk. We've actually got a video coming up about Recall. We kind of totally on purpose have a laptop from back when Recall was first announced that we did the like hax ring to make it work, even though it wasn't an AI enough laptop. And we left it disconnected completely from the Internet as a time capsule of Windows Recall when it was first launched. And we take that out of the mothballs and a brand new Signal, A Signal, excuse me, a Windows Recall laptop. And show the differences in behavior, how they. How they log, how it's encrypted or not encrypted and interesting. It's a really cool video. Yeah, that's cool that we totally on purpose definitely kept that laptop disconnected from the Internet for a year.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. Happy accidents.

[Linus Sebastian]

Happy accident. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, we just like a lot of recipes are made.

[Linus Sebastian]

We were originally planning to make a video about Recall and then Microsoft bailed on the launch and so we were like, okay, well we can't really make this video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So we just like they're not even releasing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So it was like written.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But we just like put everything away. And so it ended up working out. So we'll, we'll do the video now. Our discussion question is, is anyone excited about recall?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. Really Incredibly draconian IT teams.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. Yeah, but they already have tools like that. So it's not even like Microsoft's just reinventing the wheel from that perspective.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, maybe they could save money on their tools that they have that already do that. Because you're right, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

Floatplane chat is hilarious. Any, any excuse to mention that you use Firefox.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Every single flow plane user uses Firefox.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know that, I know that, I know, I know that. This is, this is just fact. It's like it's a law of the universe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Even the ones that use Chrome.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They still use Firefox.

[Linus Sebastian]

Coach, a small French company sells a product called Infinite Battery which allows users to swap individual cells inside in order to have them the battery last longer. The company explains that most E Bike batteries are made up of collections of 18650 cells which are wired together in series in parallel and and often an E Bike's battery will fail and stop working even if only a small handful of these individual cells stop working. The product is a fireproof casing and some documentation that allows users to swap in fresh cells with only a screwdriver. It also has a built in battery monitoring and other stats that can be seen through your phone and is currently compatible with about 90% of existing E Bike brands. This is super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we did a video, man. This was years ago at this point where the title is this should be illegal battery repair blocking. And it was when I discovered that not only will brands not enable you to replace the cells in your battery pack, but some of them will actively block you from doing it by detecting a change in voltage at the bms, then self destructing if at any point that voltage goes outside of certain parameters. And this was back when Colin was working here. He told me that apparently some of them are so, so bad that not only will they self destruct if it like goes to zero, but they will self destruct if you charge them. And it's like it suspiciously charges like too much more better. You must have changed the cells in here and they'll turn off. Just go to sleep forever. That is brutal. I still believe everything that I said back then. That should be illegal. And I think that this E Bike company sounds super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's some Microsoft announcements from build 2025. Microsoft has made their Windows subsystem for Linux and LSX open source with the code up on GitHub. Now LSX allows Windows to natively run ELF executables and implement Linux syscalls inside the Windows kernel. Very cool. Microsoft is also adding model context protocol Support in Windows 11 for tighter integration with AI. All right, from an official statement, the MCP platform on Windows will offer a standardized framework for AI agents to connect with native Windows apps, which can expose specific functionality to augment the skills and capabilities of those agents on Windows 11 PCs. Okay. And finally, Microsoft has announced the newest web syndication standards nl Web, designed to make it easier for AI to crawl the Internet and add tighter AI integration into web pages. Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hooray.

[Linus Sebastian]

And in other hooray news, OpenAI buys one of Joni I've companies IO for six and a half billion dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh good. I'm happy they had that much money.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was reading an article about this acquisition that highlighted products that the ex design chief at Apple was working on with his like love from or IO company. Like whatever. Whatever it is that he's doing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

And one of I think two projects that they highlighted was that he's designing his company's headquarters. And I was like okay, like right. But isn't that just like like a necessary thing that. Because people need a place to sit. Like what do you actually, what do you actually do? I'm actually, I'm a hundred percent not sure and maybe I'm missing something here, but I haven't seen anything that lovefrom or IO have done that are worth six and a half billion dollars. Like can we, can we contextualize this at all? Like this must be, this must be a game changer. Like absolute game changer. Can you guys, can you guys let me know like what love from or and or IO have done to be worth six and a half bees?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently Sam Altman has been working with Johnny. I've already on some like I'm assuming AI enabled smart wearable necklace thing because apparently we didn't learn anything from the AI pin. So maybe no one's giving me anything in here. Well, I don't think they've done anything. So I think the, the value is done stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

They've done like design work for companies. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not like oh, but I don't think they've released like a product.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not like Johnny, I've just been like sitting there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wouldn't be surprised.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean. No, I would, I would. He seems like a, he seems like a go getter grinder. I just what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The 6.5 billion?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is your what to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, sorry. What? Sorry, sorry. 6.5 billion. What about the 6.5 billion?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? No, you said what?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, don't worry about it. It doesn't matter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I must have misheard you. Okay, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's the. The whatever. They've already been working together behind closed doors on a device.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. But for six and a half billion dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, how many units of said device could you possibly be hoping to sell such that you could amortize over that number of units? The $6.5 billion acquisition of your partner.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I really. You know the. You know the analysis that happened when Elon, like, bought and sold his companies to each other.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And people were like, oh, it's. It's because he's like, effectively moving money around so that he has more stock control of a higher percentage of whatever, blah, blah, blah. I really wonder how much of that is happening en masse in the AI space as there's like, all this funding going in and then companies are finding like, oh, everyone kind of hates it, and there's a lot of free models and there isn't actually a ton of money in, like, developing LLM tech. Let's just like, buy companies and do this other stuff to, like, move the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Money around, I mean, I guess. Well, hey, congratulations, Johnny. That's a lot more money than you would have made hanging around at Apple.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, good job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure. Unless. Just moving money around. I mean, I like, really feel like it might be. There's all These rumors about OpenAI and Microsoft kind of breaking up and I don't know, the last thing that OpenAI did that was big in the news, that wasn't drama compared to other companies that are, like, pushing big models and arguably more effective models and OpenAI's models, many of which are just open source, which just, like, largely removes the need for them to exist. I don't know. It's an interesting field for OpenAI right now, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, our discussion question, which I actually do want to discuss for a bit, is, let's say this isn't a necklace. Let's just speculate that it's not a necklace. What wearable AI tech can you think of that would actually be something you would consider buying? Because I have felt a little left behind by current hardware trends. I don't want smart glasses, at least not in their current form.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How many people do?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, some people do. I mean, Meta's selling some glasses I don't use actually don't even. This is not a copilot enabled PC. I don't even have a copilot button. This one isn't either. Yes, it is. It's right there. Ah, okay, so you're clearly in the same situation as me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God, it does do something when I press it. Well, I'll have to kill that. I'll find a way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's not. Okay. The point is, I have used copilot enabled PCs and have only ever pressed the button by accident. I don't even press it by accident. I don't use AI.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I blocked it out. Like you blocking out ads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. But. But people are you. Like, I don't. I don't really use it as part of my workflow. Like, I'll occasionally fire up, you know, ChatGPT or, you know, whatever to. To. Like, when I was brainstorming names for Smash Champs, I. I was like, oh, okay, yeah. What would you call a badminton center? I ultimately went with something that was different from anything that I spit out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But use it as a sounding board.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I used it as a sounding board, but like, I almost. I will never rely on it. I shouldn't say will never. I don't mean that. Future looking. Maybe someday I will rely on it, but I never really rely on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not the intention right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

And so I just feel like, like, all the new products that are coming out are, like, not for me. I like to write things myself. I don't want to wear smart glasses and I'm just like, can I just. I don't know, can I just have like, EarPods? Oh, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, they could be headphones already.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love how effective Apple's branding is, man. The fact that you called them EarPods is, like, mind blowing to me. I go out of my way consciously to call these my earphones these days because it just. It bothers me that my kids call any earphones AirPods. Like, it just bothers me. AirPods are not a monopoly, even though they basically are. Sorry, sorry. It just bothers me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The reason why I do like calling them EarPods.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know they're the only ones that I hate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All the other.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, you're wearing ones that seem to be staying in. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They, like, hurt because I had to jam them in. Like, my ears will be sore for the rest of the day. Oh, woe is me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I mean, it's better than the other parts that are gonna be sore. Okay, sorry. I don't know why I said that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But okay. If you look at like, AirPod 4s. They got actually pretty significantly smaller.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there is room to have some expansion to fit a little bit more tech in there, especially if it's just, like, reporting out to your phone or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then you could hear because they have the ability to talk to LLMs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so. So. But then let's. Let's. Let's ask the usual question, right? And that is, why would that need to be in my earphones? Why wouldn't it just be in my phone, which is connected to my earphones?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so let's try again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's no wearable then, though. That's the problem. Other than glasses. Like, what the heck would a necklace do? Nothing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it could have a camera on it. You laugh, but it's basically that stupid Google thing. Yeah, that Google no, like, camera that would take pictures with AI at, like, the right times or whatever. Everyone's, like, completely forgotten about this. I bring it up everywhere. It's so bad. Do you guys remember what that stupid thing was called? Chat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're, like, pretty hyper out of time. I can help you go pack up your room if you want. Sure. What else we need to get through? We got a couple merchants.

[Linus Sebastian]

One more really important thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Two brave souls are. Clip says. Hold on. Hold on. Yeah, hold on. Google Clip. I think that's it. Or wait, was Google Google Clip software. Clip on camera device designed by Google. Two and a half stars from the Verge. Nice. I think that might have been it. Anyways, hold on, hold on. You're gonna like this. Two brave souls are fighting to preserve the lost art of GPU boxes. Oh, okay. Check this out. Look at this. It's like a table book.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that's cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

They went around.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look at what we had.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man, I knew you were gonna like this. And painstakingly captured cool GPU box art from back in the day and just made, like, a table book of it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look how, like, this is a crazy card and how, like, normie and plain that looks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Compared to all this stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at this. This is so awesome. Dan, are you getting this on screen at all?

[Dan]

I sure hope so, Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Overclock.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, I can see it.

[Linus Sebastian]

An Archive of Graphics Card Box Art is a new book showcasing the most radical GPU box art from the bygone era of bombastic branding and is being being released by publisher lock Books on May 31st. Curated by Mike McCabe and Sam Bailey, it will feature over 300 retail boxes from the late 1990s through to the early 2010s plus over 50 GPU. Print ads from the golden age of games. Gaming magazines. That's all. That's cool. I like it. Messages. Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We should get one for the Office.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd be down.

[Dan]

All right, couple Left here. Hi, DLL. Recently upgraded PC after years. Why in 2025 does it seem like Windows? Is Windows unable to migrate apps and settings seamlessly? For example, Android iOS upgrades, too. Resetting up apps, Explorer pinned items is still so manual.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a good question. I mean, I actually find the process pretty darn manual ON Android and iOS as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Windows, really? Sometimes you upgrade Windows, is it pretty seamless or do they mean moving devices.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like a fresh install? That's what it sounds like to me.

[Dan]

Yeah. Migration.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like, I guess for me, I would say there's a really, really fine line between carrying forward settings that will be helpful to the user and carrying forward crud that might have been like bunging up your previous Windows install. So I just don't know. I don't know how you'd fix that without making a lot of other things worse. Yeah, and you might say, okay, yeah, but I'm the user. I could decide what I prefer. But a lot of users would probably use this convenient option and then have their system be bunged and then blame Microsoft for it. So I can see why a fresh install is a fresh install. I get it.

[Dan]

Last I've got for you today, Linus. Have your badminton friends over there reacted to smash jams yet?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. I had told them last year that it was coming, so pretty much everyone. I showed them some of the pictures on, like, Google Maps and stuff like that, and they were mostly like, what? Really? I'm like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I told you I was doing this. They're like, yeah, but like, it looks really good. Thanks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Appreciate that. Yeah, it's been good. I got together with most of my, like, badminton crew this year. I played every day. I'm dying. I think one of my toenails on my left foot is probably gonna fall off. My tennis elbow is back full force. No, but it's. I have, like, no grip strength right now from just, like, using it hard all week. I. I'm. I think I lost about six pounds.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've got little man doing five different things for his forearms.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, really? Yeah, Five different things. I mean, at his age, there's probably a six, but that's the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The. That's on his own.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And I guess we'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel, same bad. Bye.