Five
We are lot
Hello, oh Right we're live up. Hi everyone
That is quite the setup you've got there for how professional everything, but you looks your lighting and camera situation is ass
So that's cool, I mean is it not very good on my end
Okay Cool, I mean the lighting is not that great, but I also didn't necessarily turn the best lighting on
Neat and the camera is just a webcam, but it looks a lot better than what I'm seeing come back at me through the stream
Yeah, no you look like ass Yeah, like two cheeks and a starfish and deal with our fish. I will deal with it
We've got a pretty sick echo going on there. Yeah, sorry. That's coming through your laptop
Why is there a poop stain on Linus's tongue?
Huh?
Don't see that you accidentally licked my pop filter and it is nasty
It is oh man
What man we got to clean this thing good gravy
Buh eat over it. I don't even know what you're talking about
It's like probably old crumbs yours is no better, sir
In fact, if anything yours is kind of gross, sir
Yeah, it's the it's the liquids that have hit it that are the problem
He spits when he talks he f***s anything that walks
As long as he gives it chicken first
Pay my dues
Alright
Okay, are we like are we we're probably gonna have to start the show pretty quick without much of a pre-stream today
Yeah, I think so. I Think we're good to go Luke moved slightly. So I'm just gonna readjust him. I
Know I like I'll be here. You'll be there. Okay. I'll be here. I'm just I'm doing something. That's all
You
Okay, that should be about that I think
So we just get some more levels for you Luke, I think it's sounding good
Hello testing one two three four. Wow something happened that matters. I think your
Mike is turning itself down. Could you check to make sure that it's?
No, no, dude, this isn't my setup. Okay idea and I need you to go to the sound panel
Broadcast and see what your mic level is it
He doesn't even have NVIDIA broadcast. No, no, that's fine. You sound fine
Okay Just your level is too low and it might have turned you down automatically
about it
Bless
I
Anything Hello testing one two three four
What is it? What's the question? Uh? In the sound panel. What is your mic level?
Which like in the in the calls sound panel no in the computer sound panel got it. So if you go to
Change system sounds if you just start menu sounds
Then I know I just I thought you meant in the call. Oh, I'm I'm sorry
It's like halfway halfway. Yeah, I don't know turn that up more
Okay, oh wait, oh I've got all the way and then I can adjust you here
Oh, I thought you meant what I was getting to it's not a hundred. Okay. That's good then
Oh, you guys know that I like to have the twitch and YouTube dashboards as well, right?
Okay, maybe for next week. Let's not bother for this week. Okay
Okay, you guys ready you know in the setup on your laptop. Yeah
We changed out our laptops. Oh
What am I holding here
Linus from our iPhone user intro currently charging. Oh
Okay, I might like to take the power bank. Can I take the power bank? Yes, this would be really useful
Nice oh look at all that PD then you say where you're headed remember that we're live
Okay The answer is no
Check how's the elbow? Oh, I was just massaging hit actually work in oh, I guess you could see me
Which is why you asked I played last night and
I'm paying for it a little bit. I think my ibuprofen from this morning is wearing off
I Am getting my I got my x-rays already
Last Friday, I want to say. Yeah, I think it was last Friday. I got my x-rays
and then I'm gonna go in for I
Have my referral now from the x-rays to go to the like orthopedic specialist or whatever
And then my hope is that they're gonna tell me I think so
Aren't they joint doctors?
Yeah, okay. Yeah, so my hope is that I hear myself
Do you have the stream open?
Yeah, there we go. Yes, yes, yes My hope is that they are going to tell me that I'm a good candidate for PRP
And then I want to get a PRP injection and hopefully speed up the healing a little bit
Because that is as far as I can tell basically the only thing you can do other than just like keep doing your physio
exercises take anti-inflammatories apply heat, but I'm doing all that stuff and
It's taking a really really long time to heal
Yeah And Dan vibes, I know the problem is that the cable is too tight
So I've been trying to solve that, but I'm aware of the problem. I think it's okay
Okay, I'm good to go if you guys are good to go
no way Dig is relaunching leading dig engineering says date and T
Community first platform gives users more algorithm control your take on what a modern reddit should have
I mean you are sending this at the wrong time during the show. Yeah, okay
There you go. Good reply Dan. We're gonna talk about that later Yeah, Linus is old now
Now do Canadians say
Parad what? Parasetamol or acetaminophen paracetamol. Oh acetaminophen for sure
We say acetaminophen. Yeah. Oh minifen whatever we say something Tylenol. We say that one
I say I say acetaminophen. I guess tennis elbow
Which one is it is Luke saying it right he's probably saying it right
Oh, there we go nice
Those oddies they look like it acetaminophen
Tylenol is really bad for you. I mean I don't know. It's better than being in so much pain. You can't sleep sometimes. So
Sure You guys ready to go I had tendon repair surgery tendons take forever to heal. Yeah
They're way more apparently the the person who set up business just messaged me
Nice and they are more comfortable this way they fit fine the other way
nice It's hard to tell when there's a is it though cable on each side is it though
There's a cable on each side. Is it though? Is it though?
Yeah, there's no right or left indicator
Apparently Luke is still pretty quiet. Yeah, he keeps getting turned down. I don't know why
Hello testing one two three four. See that's better
Do you want to keep talking? Yeah Dyslexic stoner 240 says I've had a tendon injury since September. I'm still not back to being able to lift more than 20 pounds
Yeah, that's about the timeline. I'm on right now. I think I got injured in more like October
I don't even remember anymore. I just know that it was months and I'm really unhappy
No, that's fine might be somewhere else that should be better maybe
Maybe okay You
Guys ready I'm ready Luke
I mean, I'm good whenever man. That's are you but I thought we're dealing with your audio levels
Are we are we not? I'm not doing anything on my end. Sounds fine. Oh, okay. Let's do this thing then. Yeah
I can always play with it Okay, okay, you got your panels and stuff. I'm ready to go. Oh wait, I don't think I have the panels either
Yeah, did you sign me into that no I figured you use your laptop for that
Oh, okay, I guess that's not people asking you about the backpack in the corner That's not my backpack the the owner of this
Residence is just based and has an LTT backpack
nice I
Based where
Get it because you're obviously not at home sure
You know who it is yeah, I know I'm just
Based yeah, babe. I have I have good news based even mean oh
My front shoulder thing didn't bug me when I worked out this week and we played two hours of pickleball at my shoulder was fine
How is that good news? You think I'm gonna switch to old man racket support just for you. No, that's the only thing you can play
Wow Thursday, I'm gonna try badminton Thursday. Why Thursday?
Cuz that's probably the best easiest day for me to go do it. Are you not gonna be there Thursday?
Well, I don't you know that LMG badminton night is on Tuesdays, right? I know. Oh, okay
But sorry, sorry, wait, where are you going on Thursday?
You're just gonna like randomly go on Thursday. I thought you went there like all the time. Well. Yeah, what I'm not injured
He's poking at a sore spot for me here I did manage to go play last night, but I like not at the level I like to play at
Gonna play next Tuesday No
Okay, well, just let me know when you're gonna. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, don't worry. We're gonna get back into it
I'm gonna train you up, dude. We're gonna train you up. You're gonna get trained
I was very happy because you know, it's it's not the same motion. Yeah, and I honestly found that I was overhitting all the time
So it was a lot less force, but still two hours and I felt nothing
So that's incredible pickleball is actually crazy fun. I've only played a couple times, but it's a blast
Was that your first time? That was my first time
Emma had this idea we ended up playing something that I coined Emma ball
Where we each side would serve at the same time and you'd play with two wiffle balls nice time. It was actually really fun
nice We're gonna blast a really cool place. Oh, we should get started chicken involved actually technically
Yes, because we went to a place that serves chicken and also has pickleball
Okay, I'm hitting it time
You You
You
What is up everyone another day another launch where the MSRP cards are either nowhere to be found or
Very tiny few to be found. We're gonna be getting into that talking about both the launch of the RTX 5070 and
Radeon 9070 and 9070 XT
We will also be talking about an article that is from last week
But I think still merit some discussion today tech radar says pre-built are always
Superior that is the honest truth unless you are an IT God
What okay, what else we got for this week? What a week. It's gonna be
For the seven people that care Mozilla rewrites firefox's terms of use after user backlash and their brain back dig
Which I mean that that might be good. I'm digging it get it. Maybe yeah. Yeah
The show is brought to you today by Squarespace
Vessie Corsair and of course our rap partner D brand our laptop partner Dell and our chair partner
Oh, there it is. Oh, sorry. I gotta cover it up because it's a secret
Shh secret lab. I get it. All right. Why don't we jump right into our first topic today?
Which is of course going to be the big launches this week Adam put?
Gosh darn it He put so much work into preparing this topic that I'm gonna do my very best to read as much of as I can without getting
Exhausted and video AMD have launched their 70 class cards and boy were they doozy's here's a rundown from worst
To less worst the NVIDIA RTX 5070 turns out no it does not in fact have
4090 performance dude what dude you were there with me when I filmed that little clip where I like did the little quip to
Austin right or had you joined us yet? I don't think you had
Never mind. I lied because we were at the keynote together But Luke was sitting somewhere else he had better seats and then I just went where they shepherded us into the press area
Where we were like, oh, okay, so I guess we're like Third-class citizens after the investors and the analysts because that's what NVIDIA's into these days any who I didn't have great
Seats, but I was able to hear Jensen say that the upcoming
RTX 5070 at 549 or 649 or whatever 549 would match the performance of the 4090 and
at the time My camera guy Andrew was like, do you want me like filming this? I'm like
Buddy We're at a press conference a
Everyone in their dog is already filming it as you can see so we are contributing literally nothing to the zate geist or however
You pronounce that It isn't thank you guys. It's all man
I got I got dunked on for my pronunciation of
Wunderkind in the anyway, it doesn't matter the point is I said it wrong
Um Anywho we are contributing absolutely nothing literally anything we record here of the stage is redundant because
Everyone else in their dog has their cameras out recording it and number two
What they're doing is completely redundant anyway because NVIDIA is live streaming the whole thing and you could do
You could get a way better quality version of it from youtube
The gamer moves seem to be I know I know I think bit with Kyle did this and a few other people
But I don't remember who where they just re-streamed the broadcast and stayed home
Yeah, they just commented over it. Yeah Tons of live viewers. It was it was like very very I mean dude. I told NVIDIA
I don't go to press conferences The only reason I was there was because we were supposed to go get hands on with the 5090 anyway
The point is I was there when Jensen said it and
In that moment I was like yo Andrew I know I told you that we're not filming anything but get get the get the camera get the camera
I got mic'd up like put on the mic. Okay, and I got that clip dude
That clip has been I'm gonna get so much mileage out of that
I'll believe it when I see it clip because every time NVIDIA says something that is just complete bullshit
I'm gonna be able to pull out that clip pull it out again of me at the press conference for the 5090 launch being like
I'll believe it when I see it. Um, so yeah, well, you would have been able to pull it out for every single NVIDIA launch that I have personally seen so
It's about 20 faster than a 4070 barely nets a single digit percent increase over the 4070 super
It's 12 gigs of VRAM poses longevity concerns, especially at 4k, and it is pretty much non-existent at retail
While those quick to the punch were able to get their hands on a card most folks were unable to find them at msrp
and The more expensive partner cards even those ones sold sold out shortly afterward
Adam included a picture from pc part picker
Where there is only one card in stock and this is a 5070 a card with a
$549 msrp And it is priced at
$1,029 as of 4 20 p.m. March 6th
nice Hashtag blaze it your money that is sweet just light it on fire light it all on fire
Yeah, AMD things went
A bit better, but it looks like the story is
Complicated it was a much better received launch including by yours truly
The 90 70 has the same msrp as the 50 70 from NVIDIA while being about 9 faster at 1440p and 4k raster
in ray tracing the 90 70 beats out the previous flagship 7900 x tx which launched at an msrp of
$1,000 but actually fell behind the 50 70 in our testing though other outlets found that
It was within 5 to 7 percent across their suite of ray traced games
We did notice that the worst performance for the 90 70
Was in blacksmith wukong where it seems AMD is still struggling a little bit
It gets 16 gigs of GDDR 6 though Which gives us a little bit more confidence that it will continue to be able to keep up in the future
Without seeing lag spikes and was in stock for substantially longer actually several hours rather than several minutes
Meanwhile the 90 70 x t competes in performance with the 50 70 ti and AMD's 7900 x tx and raster and ray tracing
It competes and even beats the 50 70 in several titles great card
undercuts and digits offerings and price brings ray tracing to a serviceable level and is generally pretty good
However, however. Oh, yeah fsr4 looks pretty good image quality. No more distracting than dlss4
And outlets who have done deep dives into the image quality rated as matching the dlss cnn model
But legs behind in some areas compared compared to NVIDIA's latest transformer model
However, it's not all sunshine and roses for AMD and there's going to be a number of sources that we're going to be talking about
So stick with me for a little bit here guys because there's a lot of sides to this story
video cards with a z dot com
Oh, that makes sense because video cards with an s wouldn't exist
Because you'd have to have like video cards
Hey, I get it. They were planning for the future. They had a crystal ball when they bought that domain
Oh, boy. Uh, anyway, they got a quote from ocuk's andrew gibson who stated
msrp is a capped quantity of a few hundred
So prices will jump once those are sold through
They also received insight about rebates from swedish retailer inet.se who claimed that msrp prices will apply to a limited number of cards
The prices only apply to the first shipment of each model
I have a note in here from adam who prepared this topic
Linus, can you comment on this sort of rebate behavior? Is this common place?
My experience in the grocery industry knows that this isn't out of the ordinary
But I also sold jam and shortening. So not sure how that translates. What I will say is this
Back when Back when I was working in retail
Demand for the latest GPU was not like it is today
um I would say under normal circumstances
Yes, there are elements of this launch that were that would seem pretty wild if you haven't worked in the industry before
But are kind of normal like the fact that pricing didn't seem to be finalized up until
Like the hours before the launch and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. That's not unusual
We would I'm not saying it's good. It's not good. It's absolute madness, but it's not
Unusual we would regularly cut po's for literally like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of GPU's
And have no idea what our cost was for them and what our msrp was going to be for them
Hundreds of thousands of dollars of GPU's like like hundreds of of top spec cards
And we literally wouldn't have a price Evga wouldn't have a price and our direct NVIDIA rep wouldn't have a price. They're just like
Buy them. This is your allocation Take them or someone else will take them and you're like
Okay, because what else are you gonna do? You don't you don't have any GPU's to sell what your computer store with no GPU's is ridiculous, right?
So you just take them and that's and that's it you cut a po
um However, what I will say is that the idea of having
A a rebate like this like an instant rebate because there's different kinds of there's different kinds of rebates
Okay, so there's your mail-in rebates. Those are the ones that have the little form you fill out for the consumer
And they they send in the they mail in the form and they they get some money back
The redemption rates on those are somewhere between 10 and 50 percent
Depending on the size of the rebate the smaller ones tend to have a very low redemption rate
And the higher ones tend to have a much higher redemption rate once you go past a certain number
Don't quote me on those exact numbers. It's been a minute and consumer behavior might have changed a little bit
But the point is just that there's a wide range of redemption and the people who
Do redeem it are essentially being subsidized by the people who don't redeem it
That's the way the math works on the on a mail-in rebate. So there's your mail-in rebate
Okay, then there is your kind of point of sale rebate po s rebate
And that's going to take place At the point of sale and those are those are kind of like a commission or a spiff
For a uh for like a a salesperson, but it goes at the retailer level
So you're expected to kind of use it for a short term promotion
um And and the idea is that you're you're driving sales during some kind of an event like uh march amdness
For for march madness AMD usually does a like a basketball themed promo for march madness march amdness
So that would usually have something like uh like a po s rebate across
bundles of AMD products or partner products in order to kind of push up the volumes during that time
The last kind would be like a price protection
slash um Like like instant rebate instant rebate actually there's more of a terminology for po s rebate, but like a price protection
So like a credit essentially a credit where they are taking your entire
inventory that you have and they are price protecting you down to a new
Presumably permanent price and that would happen in the event that you had something like a significant price drop
So I would say the only example of that that I remember seeing was when NVIDIA launched the
gtx 480 or 480 gtx
Excuse me. I've got my my prefixes and suffixes moved around because NVIDIA moved them around
um NVIDIA launched that card thinking that it was going to sell
and it like didn't I think
I think that was probably the worst NVIDIA card launch that I saw
In my in my years working at ncix. We effectively they were dead in the water on launch day
And so what happened was we had our inventory that we had bought without knowing how much we were paying for it
And we basically went look guys you fucked this
um You need to deal with this And so we got our stock price protected down if I recall correctly. It may have also been a pos rebate, but one that was like
This is a pos rebate But it the understanding was that it was perpetual to help us get rid of this stuff and and they effectively adjusted the price of that thing
So with all of that in mind the idea
of a new card arriving And some portion of my inventory being
instant rebated as like a an introductory promo
Knowing that some of my inventory would
Jump back up to a higher price after the fact
No, I have never seen that before
And I consider that to be if that is indeed what is happening
There is more to the story which we'll get to but if that is indeed what is happening
I consider that to be extremely disingenuous because that is not
Uh reflective of what the long-term situation is going to be that's an introductory promo
That is not an msrp And if you're not enabling and I can tell you again from working in retail and knowing that this hasn't changed
I can tell you that the margins are not there to support
Selling this thing at 5.99. So I'll use this the xt as my example
The margins are not there to support selling this at 5.99
If you need it is to rebate to get there you make like six points on a GPU like get real as a retailer
That is unless you are well We'll get to the whole thing where you can have marketplaces sell the GPU and they can be at higher prices
And you take a cut of that and well, I mean it's not my fault. I didn't price it at that anyway
That's a whole that's a whole other conversation. This is very
Very deep very complicated
And we're just getting started So I would say the closest thing that I ever saw to the kind of fervor
That is going on in the GPU market right now because I worked there
pre ai boom pre crypto boom, right
I would say the 8800 gt Was the closest I ever saw and that that was a rip in
launch Like it basically offered similar procedure. He remembers this guy remembers. It was a good time
Anyone who was there for 8800 gt launch
Remembers because that thing was wild. It was based on the g92 die if I recall correctly
So it was a process node shrink compared to the g80 which was the 8800
gtx that was the the top spec card And this 8800 gt was on this new die that was on a new node. It was crazy power efficient
It clocked crazy. Well, it was it was killer
I think it had a little bit less RAM or something like that Like it had less vram, but it was available in two different configs one with less and one with more
And you didn't really need the extra vram for a lot of modern games at that time
So a lot of people went with the lower priced lower vram one
And it offered Bloody near the same performance this 8800 gt like non gtx and it was like a mid-cycle refresh
The whole thing was bizarre near 8800 gtx performance at a fraction of the heat
Therefore it was a single slot card and at like half the price
Like it was wild and if you compared it to the 8800 ultra which was
Barely better than a gtx, but cost way more the value proposition was like unheard of like people and remember
Sli was a thing back then and scaled pretty okay across a lot of games that people actually played
So people were buying two of these For like the price of a single 8800 gtx and absolutely
Turb stomping the gtx in terms of performance
Nobody could keep these things in stock. It was a feeding frenzy
And what happened was over time the 8800 gt did go up in price
But it didn't happen like this. It didn't happen that
Your initial inventory would come in
And they would basically have you pay a higher price and then instant rebate you down
So you could sell a limited amount of them at a lower price. No, you paid the lower price
And the way that pricing went up was that your next shipment would be at a higher price
So it was up to the retailer to determine, you know, how much they were going to market up or whatever
With the manufacturer's suggestions, right? It was up to the retailer how they were going to market up
But no one was kind of exercising external control on that card by having you pay a higher price
And then enabling the msrp with a spiff or a discount or an instant rebate or a pos rebate
Or whatever these mechanisms are
So no in conclusion, I have never seen what Andrew Gibson and the swedish retailer are
describing No, I have not
So let's hear the other side of the story
The verge asked AMD Can you confirm or deny that the best prices on the best priced cards are capped in this way?
And what AMD said is it is inaccurate that the 549 599 msrp is launch only pricing
We expect cards to be available from multiple vendors at 549 599
excluding region specific tariffs and or taxes
Based on the work we have done with our aib partners and more are coming
At the same time the aibs have different premium configurations at higher price points
And those will also continue now. That's another thing that is different these days
It used to be that a premium version and i'm going to use evga's lingo. Okay, so a ko or uh, sc or um
Okay, kingpins are bad examples. Those were a lot more expensive, but these
These uh, these these premium versions of a card
usually Didn't encroach or barely encroached on the pricing of the card above them
Nowadays, dude It feels like you can see like a like an overbuilt card like a premium or an overclocked version of a card
That literally costs like 30 percent more
And you're looking at it going like well, well, hold on I shouldn't I just be getting like a completely new class of GPU for this. This is ridiculous
But because the price bands Have been so stretched out like they used to have to fit
Like your 30 class GPU your 50 your 50 ti your 60 your 60 ti your 70 your
You know your 80 your your 90 or your your tighten
But all of that fit within a you know about 200 to
800 a thousand dollars, right? Well now well, I don't know. We've got price bands all the way from like 400 bucks all the way to
$2,000 So all of a sudden
You can have a card that's supposed to be $400. You have an overbuilt version of it. That's $550 or $600
And you're still like 50 100 bucks below the next up card. It's ridiculous
So it's really it's really hard to put downward pressure on the pricing of a 50 70
When 50 70 ti's are so much more expensive that jumping up to it isn't just a logical step
Um, all right, what else do we have here?
It's a long topic and that tangent took so long and it's still such a long
Well, dude, I mean is it interesting because you guys can tell me if you're more than we can move on
Okay, people seem pretty engaged. Okay many folks have cried foul on AMD claiming. They are doing evil d
deeds Adam's guess is that it's mostly incompetence
I mean, of course companies are trying to maximize profits. That's what they exist to do
But AMD doesn't AMD doesn't sell gps out of the goodness of their hearts
But there does seem to be some incompetence But also maybe some strategic incompetence because I had another email hit my inbox that adam
Didn't have access to that will add a little bit more context to what i'm about to say
So strap in The pricing was last minute
Hardware unboxed noted in their 9 000 series announcement video that they had prepared
Multiple conclusions to the announcement because AMD hadn't determined pricing yet and we did the same thing
We prepared three different conclusions for our video depending on the announced pricing from AMD
That means that this information was likely
Provided last minute to retailers and even board partners who would have needed to prepare promotional materials social media posts
Signage advertising database entries and more in an extremely short period of time
AMD would have had to communicate to all of their retail and manufacturing partners
Provide compensation if prices were being adjusted in the form of rebates or payments board partners would have had to reprice all
Their products communicate to retailers and si's and the like and this scramble leaves a lot of room for errors
Like best buy listing the msrp cards as on sale at launch time
AMD has since confirmed This was an error on best buys part because the availability date was supposed to be a day after
Whoopsie doodles Board partners also deal with razor thin margins and have a big interest in making as much money as possible from pent up demand
So the question is what can AMD do about this and adam's conclusion is i mean not much
Frank azor from AMD says they will be encouraging aibs to keep cards at msrp
um and we spoke uh
and i think that's um
I think that's A little bit disingenuous personally because i do believe that AMD can do more than just suggest things
Here's an example of something that AMD could do is if board partners are not allocating enough of their cards to
msrp versions They could not allocate them gpus. That is
Literally the lever that is the way that GPU makers and this drives me crazy because
I can be kind of pedantic sometimes and this is a distinction that actually does matter in my opinion
GPU makers Are named Intel AMD and invidia
Graphics board or video card or graphics card or add in board board board partners
Those are the sapphires ASUS's MSI's
Power colors of the world. Okay, so that's not a GPU. That's a graphics card
A GPU is the actual silicon die So that's the leverage that GPU makers traditionally have
Over their board partners over the graphics card makers is that they can basically say look
Play by our rules Or you will live you will either sell at the price that we dictate or you will sell nothing
Now there's a problem with that
The problem with that is that then they are exerting a kind of ridiculous level of control
Over their you know partners and really not treating them very well
Especially if they don't give them enough margin to survive see exhibit a
evga Who didn't survive in the graphics card market because they simply
And this is this is a little bit of conjecture on my part, but simply got squeezed out
There was just not enough margin for them to continue to make it
Um Now here's where the story gets a little bit
Where we get a little bit more color commentary on the story We spoke with a system integrator who had a bit of a different
And I wouldn't say different take but a more a more expanded upon take
Their their take was basically that all AMD really cares about to call this launch a success
Is to see big lineups at microcenter and we did see some evidence that microcenter got a
Huge allocation compared to what was available online. I don't know this for sure
But it does seem like Retail
I feel like we're I feel like we've gone back two decades
It does seem like retail Got the priority for the launch
Compared to e-tail compared to online
which Again, you want to talk about things that I don't remember seeing in my entire career
Well, that's one of them That's wild dude that the way to get these products on launch day is that you have you like go
Line up and buy something in person
um So they were pretty frustrated their total allocation
Of 90 70 x t's from one board partner that they were able to use in their systems was three units
Those units their cost was over msrp
So what that tells me what that tells me is that
We are not getting the whole story from AMD because it's very clear from those retailers telling us
Hey, we only have pricing support on a limited number of these cards
And AMD never actually said That the everyday msrp will be
Or the everyday price on these cards will be 549 599 all they said is that they'll continue to be available
They didn't say in what kinds of quantities, right? So what that tells us is that it takes some kind of spiff or pos rebate
Or something in order to hit these prices. These are not
Everyday prices because if they were then an si would be able to buy a card at
570 dollars and make a few points of margin selling it at 599
That would be possible But what tends to happen when your pricing is controlled via spiff or via instant rebate
Is that only the large players will have access to that?
And so when you go buy something at a mom and pop shop or from a small system integrator
It'll be at a much higher price because they don't have access to any of that
They just buy from a distributor and the prices whatever the channel prices, whatever the market will bear
Another element that they brought up with us is that curiously
A lot Hover ship said his 9070 xt
From microcenter was 1100 dollars
Yeah, that doesn't surprise you um Okay, how do I say this in a nice way? He said 789 what?
Oh, okay, okay. He said 1100 and then he said 79. Okay, okay 789
Okay, that actually ties really well into the next point
This si contact who we're not going to name just because we don't want them to get in trouble for giving us this inside baseball
This si contact pointed out that it's curious that a lot of the cards
Have ended up kind of it for for the 70 for the 9070 xt have ended up in the
kind of 720 dollar range Kind of plus depending on how overbuilt they are
Well, here's something to consider 599 plus a 20 tariff equals what?
720 dollars
Gotcha and here's the thing Here's the thing
When NVIDIA launched their newest generation cards, they didn't know what the tariffs would be
There is at least An argument to be made that NVIDIA did not know that there would be tariffs on their cards impacting the pricing and don't kid yourself
There are tariffs and they are impacting the pricing
AMD knew
Before AMD announced their retail msrp
They knew that there would be 20 tariffs on these cards if they were shipping out of china
And many many of them are manufactured there
So what it appears to me and i can't say this for certain
But with all of the evidence that i've seen and with all of the experience that i have
What it appears to me is happening here is AMD wanted to undercut NVIDIA on their msrp
Is selling these cards into the market with 20 tariffs on them
knowing that Realistically, their their partners will not be able to hit those prices across
The entire inventory that they have but that they could strategically
Trickle out a few of them at that price while selling the rest
At a much higher price that reflects the tariffs which they expect customers to simply accept and absorb
Because GPU prices are so high in the market
It appears to me that AMD has no real intention of actually hitting those prices
But it may not be entirely their fault because AMD certainly didn't start a trade war
Question, uh, yeah, I don't think while you were working at insects. There was noticeable tariffs
But no, do you know anyone or have any experience with stores that operate during like i haven't seen this so far
But would it be normal to display? That like this is the base price and then it increases by this much because of the tariff like would you explain that?
No to the user what would normally happen is if you were a canadian store
Let's say or actually let's let's use a chinese store as a as a better example
If you were a chinese store and by chinese store, I don't mean ali express dot com
That's very much owned by ali baba group or whatever right but like it's very much a chinese store
But it is it has an english storefront Like it is a it is a you know western storefront for a chinese company
So when I say chinese store i'm talking like tau bao like an actual like four chinese people in china
chinese store So the way that I would expect them to handle it is if you are ordering from a tariff country
They would either have some kind of disclaimer that there may be that they're not responsible for any
Import duties tariffs whatever and then you would be slapped with a tariff bill when it arrives
When it arrives, yeah, that's how I would expect that to happen If you are a retailer and you are buying in bulk from a tariff source
Then I would expect that to simply be bundled into your cost the same way that anything else would be whether it's freight or
You know transaction fees or or whatever else like when we were at ncix
You would have kind of we had kind of like a cheat sheet for what the rough costs would be
So on something like a power supply I could I could basically say as long as i'm ordering in pallet quantities and not in in just box quantities
Somewhere in the neighborhood of around over the time that I was there freight costs went up a lot
So it started at around a dollar a dollar fifty and then went up to probably around
Two dollars to two dollars and fifty cents per power supply in terms of factoring in your freight cost
So you would just account for that that that import tariff as part of your of your import cost of the item
And then you would mark up from there and that would be transparent to the customer other than just that
The prices suck
Okay Fair enough
So in summary
I don't think That AMD
Had any intention of these cards being
universally available at these prices um
Or if they did have an intention I think that it might have been kind of um a misguided hope
Or I mean I I mean things have gone kind of ping-pong back and forth on the whole tariff thing a fair bit
So maybe it was a naive hope then that the tariffs would not be there and that they would be able to hit them
But as it is now I don't think they did on china. I think they did on canada than mexico
Oh, like actually, yeah, I know that's right um, so as it is now
I think that the more I think the more transparent thing for AMD AMD to do would be to say
There are outside factors impacting our costs
We are going to do our best to make sure that there are cards available at these msrp's
Um, however, it is very clear from these external factors that are impacting our costs
to import these cards, um That not every card will be available at these prices and we are effectively
going to be Shifting margin from the buckets on the cards where we're making money down to these
deeply discounted ones at msrp msrp is a is a discounted price
It's a promotional price as far as I can tell
um, and I am I'm deeply this I'm disappointed disappointed. This guy's about to say I'm deeply discounted
um
Yeah Speaking of you being deeply discounted you can take off the hat. Oh, yeah, thanks. No worries
There we go that is much more comfortable headphones over top of a took is not my vibe
Yeah Uh, so anything else questions or people people board of this conversation
I can't I can't tell if they they were into it or not because I don't have all my chats open
Yeah, it seems like people are all right with it. So yeah, uh, good luck everybody
The discussion questions are pretty good. Um, what is the source of the supply shortage?
How are board partners feeling? I'm sure they would much rather be selling more GPU's
And then do you think NVIDIA and AMD are indulging in scarcity marketing? No, well, I don't think so
No, I don't think marketing is the primary driver. I think with AMD
Um, I mean their GPU launches have been
Low volume and then their post launch sales have been even lower volume for years and years and years at this point
Like I remember Having like a really silly conversation with a viewer at one point where they were like, why don't you ever acknowledge vega 56?
I'm like, what are you even talking about? I literally like seven of them I pulled up. Yeah, I pulled up new egg and I was like
There's one card and it's like an open box card like this this GPU effectively doesn't exist
What are you even talking about or like no, it wasn't vega at 56. It was radion seven
Well, even vega miners bought all of them. Yeah, but no radion seven was different radion seven just wasn't a card
It was this like weird launch thing AMD made like a few of them with their partners
It was like repurposed dies from some workstation or compute card or something
And then they dropped driver support like immediately for it. Like it was a complete clown show of a product
it wasn't a real product and And people were like, oh why don't you don't acknowledge mg the radio?
It's like dude drop the drop your fanboy because I don't care that doesn't you're not making sense
You don't make any sense right now So that but that's been AMD's situation for years and years and years. I mean even 7900 series
Kind of did okay But that was it. It kind of did okay. I'm not convinced that they made any enormous volume of these cards
So if I was AMD and their partners even if I thought I might have something good on my hands
I'd have like ptsd from how many times I'd been given the smackdown from NVIDIA every time I tried to launch something decent
And have them just like pull another ace out of their butt crack and be like boom guess you get to sell nothing
So overbuilding for them. I mean it's risky. You got to think about the numbers involved here
Okay, guys think about the numbers if I'm AMD. Okay
Or I'm let's actually let's put ourselves in the in the
In the situation of a board partner instead because that's a much tougher one AMD's margins are going to be better
And their their inventory holdings are going to be lower because AMD only holds
GPUs or in some cases don't quote me on this But my understanding at least on the NVIDIA side is that they will actually provide kits like GPU kits to board partners
And that will include the GPU and the memory so they may take some margin there
They may actually take on some inventory risk there Don't quote me on that for AMD or even NVIDIA for that matter
But what i'm saying is that they carry inventory for only part of the finished product
The board partner They have to take on inventory for the GPU die itself for the memory for the power delivery components the pc raw pcb's any
Connectors and dudads coolers coolers are a very significant expense. So they are holding enormous inventory
There's lead time in terms of building them packing them shipping them. So by the time
They're actually delivering this thing to a consumer if all goes according to plan
They have paid all of their all of their suppliers for this stuff They are effectively probably not able to utilize their their net payment terms much
And that becomes even more true the longer this thing sits and rods
So if i'm a board partner and we're talking about a 599 product
I can assume that my bill of materials is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of
400 to 450 dollars At least so let's use let's use 450
If i overbook Right like if i overestimate and i'm a global company, right? So for i'm sapphire, right?
I got a supply if i supply even one
Single GPU to every computer shop around the world. How many am i making?
right hundreds of thousands Millions, you know, we're talking about enormous amounts of money
So if i if i get it wrong by even
5 000 units, right? That's 2.25 million dollars
I can't get it wrong And if i'm gonna get it wrong i'd rather get it wrong on the low side
Especially if i've been burned time and time and time and time again
On building a bunch of these stupid radion cards and then nobody freaking wanting them
Right So no, I don't think this is scarcity marketing
I think this is on the invidious side them just much rather using these
um These waivers to build ai products and on the AMD side. I think this is as simple as
Not buying enough allocation not buying enough wafer allocation from tsmc
I'm sure AMD would love to be selling more cards, but they've got a book waivers
Months in advance They don't know that invidious 50 series is going to suck back when they're booking
Launch allocation for production for 90 70. They don't know that
They might have Uh, that is awful by the way
I can pick you up louder and clear. Oh, yeah Um, all right. I'll stop. Yeah, or just lean away. Maybe. Uh, anyway, the point is that um
I I don't know. I don't know that invidious is going to lay a huge egg
On their 50 series launch. I might have some sort of
Whispers and scuttlebutt But I'm not going to know that their pricing is going to suck because invidious probably hasn't even determined their pricing yet
And they certainly haven't leaked it to anybody. We don't find out until the very last minute
So if I'm AMD, I'm going like oh my god. I don't know how many waivers because
5080 might be they might pull a 30 series
And just like boom Try to go after the console market. You guys remember that, right?
That's how aggressive invidia can be when they want to be
Because they were like basically f*** the playstation with this radion
Graphics hardware in it f*** the xbox
3080 is I forget what the 3080 msrp was but it I think it was like 600 bucks or something like that like it was aggressive
And the 70 was so powerful. It was such good pricing, right? Invidia can be aggressive
So I don't want to overplay my Pathetic, you know 90 70 hand
If I think I might be up against invidious top tier GPU at that price. I have no idea
But then as it turned out AMD was going to be up against their like fourth tier down and they were super competitive
So yeah, they might ramp things up, but it's going to take time
What else did we have for discussion here? I think that's it for the GPU's
All right, good chat Fascinate
What do you want to talk about today? Oh, oh my god. Are we supposed to do merge messages already down?
Did I just take way too long to go through that? Yeah, you spoke for about 40 45 minutes. Oh, so very long
We better rush through the rest of this. Okay. Was it was it boring? Sorry. I'm feeling insecure
I think it was pretty good. I would have cut you off, but yeah, it was uh, I think it was good. It was just really long
cool um
Circumcision doctor says what?
It's probably up there for one of the longest topics we've ever done. Uh, okay. Cool. Yeah
Dead anti-social and Floatplane chat says you talk too much on your show
All right, uh merge messages the way to interact with the show is to send a merge message
We don't do twitch bits. We don't do um, whatever the other thing is, uh
Super chats we do merge messages because the way we see it if you're gonna throw money at your screen
You should get some fine lttstore.com merchandise in return
And we've got a great little launch for you guys this week introducing
The terminally online pun very much intended
Thank you
There we go hoodie and t-shirt It is a brand new design that is an homage to 90s hardware and to your lifelong commitment to being online
It's available as both a hoodie and a t-shirt and I gotta say man
I saw the hoodie on set the other day and I was like, yo, is that ours because I had forgotten that I greenlit this design
The hoodie looks flipping sick It does these are printed to order here in canada for a long lasting vibrant print that was very well reviewed by project farm
On our classic cozy terry cotton hoodie blanks or our legendary t-shirt blanks
And like most of our sweatshirts the hoodie also features a secure pocket for your phone wallet keys or earbuds
Get it now at LMG.gg slash terminally online
And I would say our t-shirts are pretty well priced even with tariffs. Let's go
Uh, yeah, they're putting a lot of pressure on me to increase our t-shirt pricing by the way
So I'm not surprised I've wanted to treat the t-shirts like the cosco hotdog
I even told someone in a meeting I'll kill you if you increase the price of the t-shirt. It's a reference. It's a reference
It's a reference Did arianna know that before now? Um, yeah, it was nick so it doesn't matter. Um
I can threaten to kill nick. It's fine. The point is point is that uh
It's a reference. It's a referee gets he knows the reference
He'll kill him in minecraft. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah
Yeah, um
And they are telling me that all our t-shirt pricing is becoming
Untenable. Uh, we have never adjusted it. It's funny. We take
So much flak for our supposedly expensive products and yeah, oh here it is
This is an extremely expensive hoodie
I get it It is embroidered
This is not printed Go find me an all-over embroidered garment that is less than 150 us dollars
Go find it. It should it should probably be at least a sweater because someone's gonna find like
The sure like find me pants or a hoodie find me pants or a hoodie something big
It costs a fortune. What do you want from me? Not every product is for everybody all over embroidered not just a little logo
Not every product is for every person. I know it's expensive
But what it isn't is overpriced. It's priced for what it is. Anyway, the point is our t-shirts. They're like 20 bucks
I can't think of a single other Like creator merch that is 20 dollars for a t-shirt for a printed t quality printed t
So I don't even want to hear it. Um, anyway, the point is that we've also we've also got the hoodie
Which you guys can see here, which by the way also has printing on the back which costs us more
And that's 60 us dollars for our fine
Terminally online hoodie. This is a great shot by the way. I love this. There they are
Gen Z Not talking to each other on their phones. It's perfect. It's flawless great job Tatiana sammy and I assume already was probably involved in that shoot as well
I'm trying to find a sweater because there's like there's probably one of them
What I'm finding is a lot of them will say embroidered design and it's printed
But it looks like it's embroidered digitized D says I digitize embroidery and I promise that's cheap for a hoodie
Exactly And I'm not okay. It's not cheap, but what it is is fair. It is fairly priced
We have we have a cost markup model for our stuff
We're not demanding some ridiculous margin
Um And if you think we are hey, you don't have to buy anything. That's totally okay. Uh, any uh, any uh news on the uh
I left it alone for a while. I did I was a good boy for a little bit
I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna get one in there. What's coming any news on the talls
Oh the tall blanks. I I I don't know as far as I know. We're just ordering them
I was told I was told we have no less than three million dollars of inventory incoming
so Things are a little bare right now on the store. Okay, we know we know and I have been told
We have three million dollars of stuff on order. So hopefully there's some tall blanks in there
But that's all I know a bunch of tall blanks immediately because I'm not waiting this time. Let's go
I'm just gonna buy a bunch immediately. I was nice last time. I was like, I'll let the audience get some this time screw you guys
I'm tired of this. I don't want to wait like seven more months to be able to buy a shirt
I will sit on WAN Show when they're announced and I will order them live
I will race all of you. Oh my goodness fight me now. Okay
um Anyway, uh, we have an announcement if you were wondering
about the Tuk that I was wearing
I refused to call it a beanie. That is my uh, that is my act of solidarity with my fellow Canadians in this trying time
Uh, if you're wondering about the tuk that I was wearing earlier It's because the why is wan late series a fan favorite Floatplane exclusive series
That shows you the behind the scenes of what luke and I are up to each friday
We've been competing to see who is the one who makes a wan late
And as you can see I lost most recently to see all seven episodes in this monthly series head over to LMG.gg
Slash Floatplane Actually, I'll lose every time
Actually, I think I have a new I think I have a new favorite exclusive over there
I checked out a little bit of this and then sammy told me I had to stop watching it because he wants to get me
To react to it, but it is so funny
LMG team members share their first meeting with me
So we've got emily from the editing team mark from the editing team
Vance the executive assistant and then nicole from hr
And uh, excuse me. Um, what do they call? Oh bloody hell. What's the like custodian version of hr?
Uh, culture and talent culture and talent department
Custodian version. Yeah, like like custodian versus janitor receptionist versus secretary
Culture and talent instead of hr You know, like, uh, yeah
Sure Yeah, sure. All right. Anyway, people are loving this one. Uh, check it out at LMG.gg slash Floatplane
Oh, we haven't even done a merge message yet, right? How do you send a merge message? You go on the store pick up something nice and in the cart
You will see a little box to send a merge message to producer Dan who has been waiting
Staged for this terminally online moment for lord only knows how long and
And we'll give us a who will either reply to your message pop it up down there or curate it for me and luke to talk about
I get me Dan. I get one occasionally. Why do you guys completely remove products from the website?
I the tech bro or the workshop jacket it means there's no info and tech specs to reference for reselling or just product comparing in general
Um, because it was confusing and made the site really cluttered for people who were shopping for stuff that we do have for sale
However, when we I think there's a redesign coming up that will include an old product archive and we we are going to do that
It's taking longer than I would like but I
Don't know what to say other than things take time sometimes and I'm really sorry for that
Hey DLL on launch day. I tried to buy a
9070 xt while watching stock vanish. I accidentally bought a 9070 for 650 us dollars
On new egg. Should I just cut my losses and return it or is this an okay price?
I Was it 650 650
Man, I do not love that card. Um, however, it's so hard to determine what an okay price is when nothing's in stock
And all the price is just yo-yoing constantly like a big problem with the 9070 is the clock speed
Like yeah, it's got fewer cu's and and all of that, but it has 16 gigs of RAM
Um, and so a big part of the problem is the clock speed. I actually we didn't there was we don't have much time when it comes to launch
Like launch embargo reviews. So I don't know if it over clocks like a bad out of hell
like it's possible that that card could be
a much more competent card than it reviewed as
um, I don't love that card at that price and personally
I still have not actually pulled the trigger on my 50 90 upgrade for this cycle because
Um, I'm waiting to see if ploof actually doesn't go through with his order
He has a pre-order in at best buy and He said he'd give it to me because he decided not to go through with it
But I think he might change his mind still so I'm not going to hold him to it but um, I'll take that but I
I got to be honest with you guys on principle and it's funny because I I often see people kind of getting on me about
being rich and Sorry, what how did you phrase it?
quite wealthy Okay, yeah, you want to talk shade mr. I'm gonna buy a plane
I'm not talking shade. I'm not talking shade
What I'm saying is What I'm saying is
Sorry, you need a minute. You need a minute. I'm good. I'm good. So I'll often pee
I'll often see people kind of come at me because I'll say like look no, that's expensive. I'm not gonna buy
Yeah, the reality of it is I could buy a 50 90. I could buy a 50 90 right now
I could go on ebay. I could buy a scalp 50 90, but that I'm not going to because that's lame
Because I'm sitting here telling you guys
Don't buy scalped GPU's Don't contribute to the crappiness of the GPU market by paying these prices. So
What because I'm in a position where I can just afford to just buy it
So then I just should how hypocritical would that be?
And so I was looking at the uh, I was looking at the comments on the um, the macbook announcement video
Where I was like, yeah, all this sucks. I bought mine at a bad time
And half of it is people telling me to return it because I'm within 10 days, but guys movie magic
Our video came out 10 days ago. I bought it like three weeks ago almost. So no, I can't return it
Um, and then the other half was people telling me, you know, suck it up cry, baby
You can afford to buy a new one anyway, and I can but that's not the point
That doesn't change anything that doesn't change the fact that I bought it at a bad time because I got a last gen product
Days before apple announced the new one and that sucks. Nobody likes that
That sucks That's the whole point. Also. I just needed a hook for the intro for the video. I who cares like I literally
When I was shopping for my macbook bought a last last gen one
I bought an m2 because I knew that all I was going to do was word process on it and it wasn't going to matter anyway
So I'm not actually right like I'm not actually mad. I just
I just am saying a thing. I bought this at the wrong time and that blows it blows for anyone regardless of the money
You got roasted recently at an event because people were like, well, why do you have the like crappy iphone?
Oh the 16 plus that guy. Yeah. Yeah, remember. Yeah, because I like I don't know
I've always as much as as much as you are. What did I say before fairly wealthy or whatever?
I I've always appreciated that like, you know, you'll sit in
You'll sit in economy. You'll you'll buy the lower end thing. You'll not scalp stuff like there's
Well, it's the principle of the principles that you've stuck to. Yeah And the thing with this one is that this is the phone that I thought made the most sense
in apple's 16 series lineup Yeah, I can afford a pro. Of course I can don't be ridiculous
Literally, I bought a pro and a pro max or whatever the top spec one is they're sitting in a warehouse
I literally bought them But this is was the one that I wanted to review the platform on because I thought that in terms of
What people should actually be spending their money on this was one that made a lot more sense those features on the pro series
Yeah, I appreciate a higher refresh rate display. Of course I do
And I guess I'd love to be able to do a 3d scan of my room if the situation arises
And usb 3 transfer speeds are better for the
Once every couple months that I'll plug in and I'll do an over the cable backup of my photos or whatever
But that's it I'm not going to pay hundreds of dollars more for that and I'm especially not going to recommend that someone else
Pay hundreds of dollars more for that and I think that reviewing a product
The way that I would actually recommend buying it is more useful. I think that's more meaningful
It's kind of like um years ago. Actually Um anytime we would order a laptop alex would ask that instead of ordering the starting at configuration
We order the minimum we would recommend
Configuration so if starting at had four gigs of RAM or something we basically don't acknowledge that and we go
No, this is not a 999 laptop. This is a 1299 laptop. It has 16 gigs of RAM and etc
I think philosophically that that's something that I can get behind and it's something that I am trying to
Continue to be behind. Yeah, not pretending. I can't afford it
I mean you guys are you guys are gonna see some stuff over the next month or so of
Just stuff that we could do for the memes
You're gonna see some stuff
Anyway
The point is we have our challenges, but we're still we're still doing okay
No, it is not gonna be a tech yacht. I promise it will not be a tech yacht tech blimp tech blimp. Yeah, sure
Sure, let me get right on that. But one person in a laptop on it
Oh Thanks, Dan. Uh, oh right. Did we ever do a second merge message? Yes. Oh wonderful. What am I supposed to do?
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Lies damned lies and then msrp
bamboozled That was the guidance for the title and thumbnail. I was just reading Dan put it at the bottom of the dock
under sponsors Okay, Dan
What do you want to talk about next mr. Luke? Uh, let's let's cover the firefox terms rewrite because uh, we were we were a little kind of unsure about it last time
I was pretty sure that's not what they meant at the very least So i'm happy that they have done this although. I haven't actually reviewed it. I'm assuming it's fine
Mozilla has responded to user backlash over new firefox terms of use introduced last week
rewriting the policy to Address the overly broad lang language. That's one way of saying it used in the original version
which You know critics said the language implied that mozilla was asking for rights to any data input
Or uploaded or anything uploaded through firefox, which is literally what it said
So yep, uh, which raised concerns about data being sold to advertisers or used to train ai
Mozilla claimed that the new terms didn't represent a change in the way that the company used data
And that the company's ability to use collected data was still limited by a separate firefox privacy notice
Two days after the initial uproar firefox product chief ajit varma
Varma, yeah Announced that the terms of use have been rewritten to more clearly reflect the limited scope of how firefox interacts with user data
And the new terms explicitly state that mozilla does not gain ownership of input content
Uh discussion question. How diligent are you about reading terms and licenses for the apps you use?
Not very I think it depends completely honest. I actually read an entire contract today for the first time in a while
Oh, I read contracts all the time. Oh, I don't read
Well, that included terms of service. So I guess yeah, but okay. Yeah, it was more of a sales sale contract
So yeah, I read those for sure. I read every single one of those. I don't uh, when I'm signing stuff on behalf of the company
I'm a lot more careful if I'm using like
I don't know like discord, um
I should because they're almost certainly like selling everything but yeah, I don't
I don't know. Oh, they're probably not even selling it. I mean, aren't they just where are they based?
I I think they have significant company ownership in china. Yeah, so they're
Yeah, so they're just giving it to the chinese government. You know, don't even worry about them selling it
Yeah, I don't know. Um
Now I want to know who does own discord. You know by co-founders. I could be super wrong
I thought there was a significant 10 cents. Oh 10 cents in there
It says most likely has a majority stake. What does that mean?
Nice Can you just tell me if it actually does or not? Nice
I'm not a hundred percent certain because multiple sources say most likely
I don't know what that means. Is it banned in china? Oh, it's blocked in china
So it doesn't mean it's not funneling information
That also doesn't mean that it's not owned by uh by chinese company
It looks like there hasn't been a lot of conversation about this recently. So you know what? I'm just gonna I'm just gonna
Un allegedly there. I said allegedly. I don't know. Well, they have some amount of stake
10 cent seems to have some amount of stake in the company, but it's it's not very clear how much
I don't know. Anyways, either way. Yeah, I I I read and have raised issues with actually many times
Um contracts that the company has has signed including one very intense one with
Yeah, I'll say it one with a sponsor where
They were they were trying to give us information early, which would have been very helpful
But I don't even know if you know about this But the contract included a line like three quarters through it that said that we couldn't say any disparaging comments about them ever
And I was like No
There's no way we're signing this. No, I think I did hear this one. I think I did hear this one
You did that would have been hilarious. We would have just we would have just
Unvatted like we would have had to yeah, we would have had to just say whatever we want because that's not how this works
We would have had to break contracts. That's hilarious back to them and they're like, oh, like we're whatever I do anything
Yeah, I was like, no, you're removing this like then you'll have no problem removing it
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah Oh, that's great, which if I remember quickly
I don't know that they did no they didn't I don't think they removed it ultimately
Yeah, so we never signed it. Yeah now there's a man there's been all kinds of stuff like that that's like
Stuff that we'd love to do that would be beneficial mutually beneficial like we had a we had a laptop company
Um framework disclosure, but it wasn't framework. So whatever but we had a laptop company come to us recently and say hey
Like we'd love to integrate more deeply with you guys get feedback on branding and product design
And uh, you know, give you guys early looks at stuff so that you can kind of
Help guide us because realistically we really do appreciate your feedback as a as independent media
But the reality of it is by the time we get it the product's done. So there's not really anything we can do about it
You know, well, how about this and I had the business team bring it to me and I basically was like
I don't see what planet this can work on because
I'm making the exact same gesture as my doppelganger here
I don't see what planet this can work on because Either we do this for free, which is a complete fucking waste of our time because we're busy and we have a lot to do
You know, it's not that we don't want to be helpful or whatever It's just like we can't make it a habit to just do consulting for free for everybody. That's ridiculous
Um, so that's not an option and we can't take money for it
Because even if they gave us a contract that was like, oh, yeah, you could totally say whatever you want
We actually wouldn't be able to because anything that
We were bound by that didn't make it into the final product, right? Like any of that decision-making process
That we're privy to now because we're privy to it. We wouldn't be able to speculate on it without
So Sort of violating the
I mean at least the the spirit of the agreement like you can't like we couldn't um
Man, imagine if we were doing a review Of this macbook and I'm going to use a far-fetched example
So that I'm really not giving any hints because I promise you it wasn't apple talking to us about this apple doesn't talk to me
um, if I was doing a review of this of this macbook like
Imagine me knowing that I advised them that um
I do actually like the keyboard. So again, I'm going to use an example that is not real
Imagine if I advised them that the keyboard sucked and they shipped that sucky keyboard in spite of me saying that I didn't like it
So now I'm sitting here doing my editorial review and I'm like, yeah, I told them this keyboard sucked
But they shipped this anyway. So they're especially stupid
Imagine the strain that that would put on the relationship. Even if I was allowed to say that that's like
You're just in a position where things are like just not a good idea. Bizarre, you know, yeah
Like it's it's it's not even like it's not even conflict of interest. It's just conflict. That's just
That just doesn't work. Um, so I think I think that's come up probably half a dozen times over the years
And every time I just kind of kick it back and just kind of go like how does this how does this make any sense?
It doesn't make any sense In the particular example that I laid out as well
The the thing that was kind of funny to me was that they were it was it was clearly more
If we ignored the thing that I had to sign It was clearly more beneficial to them
Like the thing that we would have been doing would have been better for them than it would have been for us
So it's just kind of stupid But I think I think you know, they're just a pretty big company and they have one boilerplate thing
And their lawyers just didn't want to change it So like the person I was talking to you understood, I get it
But they they couldn't get the legal team. It probably would have cost 20 grand
Because they probably would have had to take the entire agreement back to the law firm and like
This is why I don't like involving lawyers and things and if you're a lawyer, whatever like nothing personal
You got you got your expertise. You got to be paid for that. You got a job to do. I get it
But I don't like talking to you. I don't like talking to you either
Yeah Sorry, you know, I'm sorry nothing personal
Uh, what do we want to talk about next?
Should we do the dig thing? Yeah, let's do the dig thing digs coming back. What?
Dig founder Kevin Rose and reddit co-founder, uh, alexis ohanian
Sure have acquired dig with the intent of reviving the platform with a fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery
And genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be. Good luck with that
I would love it if you can accomplish it dig launched in 2004 with its innovative user curated content system
And quickly became the homepage of the internet for more than 40 million unique user view
Visitors a month after a very poorly received redesign in 2010
users abandoned the site in favor of reddit and by 2012 dig's unique visitor count was down 90 percent from its peak
And the site and assets were sold off for less than 16 million dollars. Isn't that crazy to think like
Absolutely crazy considering the heights that it was that nothing and dig was everything
And practically overnight That was it. That's how fast platforms used to come and go and now
I mean you've talked about this extensively. We don't have to reopen this can of worms, but it feels like
Things are so permanent There the momentum is enormous for platforms now. Anyway, carry on. Sorry the motes are huge
Like anyone attempting to attack youtube is going to lose like it just I don't know
It is what it is Even even tickhawk like they're winning in a space, but they're they didn't win like youtube style vods
No, and shorts even then youtube shorts are taking off more importantly. They didn't win the profitability
of traditional vaude Like i'm sure tickhawk makes money, but the creators sure as heck don't
yeah In a press release ohanian summed up the plans for the new site stating kevin and I are here to build something better
than what social platforms are offering today AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best building real connections
No one dreams of spending their day hunting down spam or playing content police
They want to create connect and build thriving communities and i'm all in on this chapter
Interesting so like AI content curation with humans just commenting on it, maybe
I don't know It sounds like from that description that humans aren't even posting the links
Um I should handle the grunt work in the background while you I don't know what that means building real connections
No one dreams of spending their day hunting down spam or playing content police
So no mod no active moderation. Yeah, I don't know what that means
I don't know what that means either and because I didn't know what that meant I went to their website and I learned nothing
at all it is It is completely
useless
Uh I mean that makes sense because it's not like they've had time to work on anything yet
It's just an announcement of an intent to work on something
No explainer of you know what it is. I don't know they have a little button that every time you click it
It iterates by one. I mean I'd be down to give it a shot, but I just and it's not a lot
Oh, there's so much there's so much of why I use reddit
Is because of what's already there? Not because of what I want to be there in the future
And that's true of youtube as well Which was another great example you gave of just like a platform with enormous inertia
Yeah Conceptually, what is the difference between inertia and momentum?
I guess momentum has to actually have
um Well momentum
But inertia is always uh an innate quality quantity. Anyway, it doesn't matter
Different side same coin Momentum is defined as a tendency of a body to remain in motion
Inertia is defined as a tendency for a body to oppose the change in its position
So they're the same thing No
No I mean they sound like the same value once you calculate in simple words momentum is your force or speed of movement
And inertia is what keeps you going
Mm-hmm
What wouldn't your speed of movement in your mass be what keeps you going?
No, because if you had an elephant that was stationary, mm-hmm It would have enormous inertia, but no momentum a lot of inertia
But then if I wanted to
I guess we could okay, so only if it's completely stationary inertness then it's inertia
I guess that kind I can kind of get behind that If you had a very tiny thing that was moving very fast it would have a high inertia
I don't think that's right I'm not going to worry about it. I'm bored. Um
The best subscription ever just got more affordable
YouTube premium light On march 5th youtube announced that they are adding a cheaper tier
To the youtube premium lineup called premium light. It will cost eight dollars a month instead of 14 dollars
But there are some differences You will not get access to downloading or background play on mobile background play
Okay YouTube music
music videos Shorts and the home page will still get ads
And they also have a footnote saying that
Most videos are ad-free such as gaming fashion beauty news and more
So what am I actually getting?
Well, you get no in-video like mid-roll and pre-roll ads it sounds like
In most videos, but that does not include music videos
shorts Or the home page and you don't get youtube music. This actually sounds like a terrible deal and you should just get the regular premium
I also hate that it's it's Unclear so it feels like they can change it on me without even updating the terms
Well, this basically sounds like they just can't afford the music licensing
Because that's why you can't have background play like that's why background play costs because it's instead of spotify
Right, you can just have youtube music videos playing in the background
Um, so like I get it But also it just seems like not that compelling a value add because
I don't know if I know a single adult working person in my life that doesn't have
A spotify or youtube music or apple music or title or whatever like a music subscription. I really don't think I do
So if you're gonna have one anyway Then you should just get youtube music because at this price difference of six dollars
It's basically nothing and if you sign up as a family with some
family Then honestly the difference in price is even smaller
Uh to just get the full youtube premium
Uh next, uh
Correction for placebos
Correction for the discussion about placebos on february 14th wandshow. Oh sure. This is pretty sure the skeptics guide featuring
Yale associate professor and neurology doctor steven novella
Reacted to our discussion about the placebo effect on the wandshow a couple weeks ago. Dr. novella pointed out a misleading uh, where'd it go?
Uh a misleading sentence We said about the placebo effect and cancer survival rates
And we'd like to issue a corrective statement Believe me you'll survive cancer improves your quality of life
But it hasn't been shown to extend survival in cancer patients
You can find more information at links down in the chat. Yeah, okay
We unequivocally do not endorse companies and individuals who use placebo effect to push scant
Oh, well obviously scam products and earn a profit from each other's unfortunate situations
You guys know we hate scams. Did people think we did that? I don't know
Not if they're acting in good faith, but maybe
Yeah, we encourage you to always contact your health care professional
Uh, if you have a medical situation also, I'll say this now and
I don't know if we said this then or not Uh, we're not a medical podcast. We talk for four and a half hours sometimes
So sometimes we're going to say some stuff about other things in our lives that aren't tech
but Yeah, maybe go listen to the the Yale doctor guy and and not so much us and something that we do know
Is that um having a good outlook can absolutely increase patient compliance
And better patient compliance can absolutely impact outcomes
No matter what the disease is So, yeah, maybe not directly
But the main point of our conversation was just that if people maintain a positive outlook
And if they think that things are working it can have a positive outcome
The very very specifics my apologies if we were not correct there
And we were never Obviously
Never endorsing People selling placebos as real remedies and saying that like that's okay
I think our main point was just that like
It's a thing and that's why they get away with it because they sell you a placebo and then it is actually quite likely
Depending on what ails you that you might feel better
Um, and that's why it's so hard to nail these guys
Microsoft is testing free office desktop ads. Sorry apps
Wow I actually didn't mean to do that, but that was one heck of a Freudian slip. Wow
Microsoft is testing a free desktop version
Microsoft 365 When installing the productivity suite formally known as office
Users that opt to skip signing in with a Microsoft account will be presented with the option to use word excel
and powerpoint for free Of course, there's a catch or three
It is ad supported with a persistent ad banner on the right side of the screen and every few hours
This is great a 15 second video ad will play
Although at least it can be muted It can only save to one drive and includes up to five gigabytes of storage as part of the free package
Many features are missing. These are listed on b-bomb
But the basics are there
I've been warned b-bomb has lots of ads. Oh, wow. Boy. Do they ever that is a lot of ads my goodness
Uh, what are the limitations where what parts of this are article and what parts of it are ads? Good lord
I can earn roblox gift cards How to install
Free editing features missing. Oh my goodness dictation line spacing
Okay text box spacing
Uh pivot charts. Okay pivot table. Oh boy. Okay. So they're quite cut down. Okay. So basically use
Google's product I guess
Uh, yeah, yeah, jordan prepared this he goes is this going to result in enough paid subs to be viable?
Uh, and also asks is this for the seven people that are not aware of google docs?
It it it Is kind of feeling that way a little bit kind of feeling that way a little bit. Yeah
Ann M white and Floatplane chat says literally just get Libra office at that point like what are we even
What are we even talking about here? This is a fun one
wacky foldables and other stuff at mobile world congress
Mwc ran this week from march 3rd to march 6th in
I'm gonna say this wrong barthelona. I think it's you're supposed to do it with a th sound, right?
I wish they would I wish they would just spell things the way that they're supposed to be said because
If you're gonna have an anglicized spelling anyway
Why not in good faith try to spell it in a way that makes it
spelled like it founds Barthelona, I don't know. I don't think that is
I think it's just spelled the same way in spanish Which is probably why it sounds different than it's spelled. Well, then give me an anglicized spelling like everything else
Anyway, we're supposed to rapid fire react to each device
And give it a one to ten score. All right
So first up is the Lenovo think book flip ai
prototype A mega two-in-one
Oh My gosh
This is from pc meg.com
um Whoa, okay, we should decide we should decide what our scale means
uh So is this out of ten in terms of like
Would I buy it or would I use it because those
Definitely are not the same thing in this case like if somebody gave this to me for free
I feel like I might consider using it
It looks like a joke It looks like a it looks like it's photoshopped. It looks it looks like a meme
um Okay The outer display can flip up to become a large vertical display
So it kind of goes in it looks. Yeah, there you go. There's a there's a better shot of it
Wow, also, this is like the ugliest hotel room
um But great job pc mag for making it work. It kind of works
Luke, what's your rating?
Uh, so again, sorry, what are what are we doing it based on if we would use it or if we'd buy it?
You wouldn't buy anything. So let's go with if we buy it. I might buy something. We'll see
How about if you would use it for work? I use if this was our standard of this laptop. I would
I would use out of 10 out of 10. I would unfold it. Um
Would I use it out of 10? I would definitely use it like you wouldn't ask for something else because we could give you something else
Would you prefer it? I wouldn't
This is sounding like a six Yeah, I think it might be a six or a seven because I travel with an extra screen
Okay, and this is just an extra screen, but
slightly less cool because it's up
How are you gonna use this on a plane like?
I just don't think you would do buddy behind you. He's gonna lean their seat back
I mean, I guess it wouldn't break it though because it's bendable. I think it bends the other way. So it absolutely
Oh, yeah, right Well, to be fair though, it wouldn't crunch under because it would go all the way to the top of the seat
You'd have to like pull their hair off of it
Yeah Yeah, I'd give it a six. I think
I don't think I can go higher than a four
I would definitely use it in like hotel rooms and stuff. I would use it
All right, let's go
Next up is the Lenovo magic bay dual display concept
Here we go. This is from digital trends Oh, this looks more like your style luke
It sure does Two screens or one it's up to you
The thing that gets me with this stuff is it's really not much harder to just have an external display and a normal laptop
So external so this uses special external displays that use Lenovo's magic bay connection
To add either two 13 inch screens or a single vertical eight inch screen
It uses pogopins and magnets. It's a proprietary connector. So
You can't just carry it to the next one and I've been using the same
Uh, I've been using the same external screen for two different laptops so far
You won't be doing that here. Exactly. So like the buying of this very low
Um, the using of this at least one of the external displays probably like a seven
Very how much do you think that drives the design of these products because if I'm a Lenovo and I'm targeting businesses
Do I care at all if luke the individual would buy this?
Maybe not because I don't need to buy you care a lot that you might get lock in to the it team
Yeah, because of this because luke's company bought it for him that you have and luke likes it
And we'll complain to it if he doesn't get one again or whatever, right?
Or if the new laptop doesn't have those screens Oh boy
Lenovo yoga solar pc concept
solar It's a solar pc con solar panels on the lid
um Oh, okay. How well do they work when they have?
horrible Line of sight they claim or it's covered in stickers. They claim that even in low light conditions
The panel can generate enough power to sustain the battery charge when the pc is idle
They also claim that with enough direct sunlight
20 minutes of exposure can power up to one hour of video playback
With a long disclaimer on this claim
What do you think this feels like uh, this feels like a three to me a two like
They know battery banks exist, right? Like if I wanted to carry like solar panels, they're gonna add weight
To this thing. I have to carry them around all the time and i'm gonna use them
Sometimes how often do you like use it outside involved with it also adds more weight?
Uh, often you use it outside is a big question often use it outside
Indirect line of sight of the sun when you're not like putting it so far folded back that it's not going to see the sun at all anyways
Yeah, exactly. Um
And then you can't put stickers on the back like Dan said Okay, I don't know if that's a major consideration, but that matters a lot in my field Linus. Okay
How will they know I use arch this needs to be taken seriously. I'm sorry. I'm sorry
Have you ever been have you ever been to an it conference?
Everyone's the back of their laptops are covered in stickers
I'm sorry. I brought it up see the chat
You also sell stickers Oh goodness more from Lenovo this time from tom's hardware
A USB-C connected 32 tops npu
That's right my friends Instead of purchasing an ai laptop you could get a regular laptop
and add ai
By USB-C
I think this is a zero for me
Wow At least for my laptop like if I had like um, like I think I actually have a similar little usb ai dongle in my server right now
because we're using it for training for a um
Like a machine vision project or something like that, but in terms of the pitch of this it's Thunderbolt. Oh my god
Okay, so you're not plugging into anything that matters. Oh, what's gonna have thunderbolts? Okay, it's too anemic
32 tops not enough for you, huh? Yeah. Yeah
All right. Okay. Here we go Infinix zero series mini trifold concept
This is on tech radar Da da da da da
No Really just straight up. No
No You're not even gonna give me a number
zero Zero oh man. This is like a four maybe a maybe a one
I could do this being like you're gonna deal with the glee of unfolding this the whole way because it's not just a flip
It's not one movement. You have to I think you have to like pull the thing apart. It looks super annoying
But look I could clip it to my backpack
From lttstore.com
Yeah, no, right Yeah, look, I'm just saying I could
I'm treating a five like a neutral. Okay So I I'm like below neutral like I don't want it. I don't want it
I would actively dislike this
If I was given a new one of these I would use my my old pixel that I don't like over it
All right next it just looks very annoying to use most of the time when I'm looking something on my phone
I want it fast and then I want to put the phone away I don't want to just like
Oh, let me let me unfold this twice so I can get a full actual phone
And then go through and check things and then fold it two more times to put it back down
And then it's a massive brick in my pocket and I can put it away. That's so annoying. I don't okay this time from the verge
Infinix Zero series. Oh, we shoot so no Infinix solar energy reserving technology
Uses perovskite Solar cells which are thinner and cheaper than traditional silicon solar cells
um Its current iteration was able to deliver two watts of charging
Being able to just like huck your phone onto
Like a like a car mount or something and get charged with the sun coming through the dash
I mean, I yeah, I could see that be kind of useful while you don't use magsafe and just plug in a cable. I don't know but um
That's something It's cool if you're
Outside somewhere and you put your phone face down on a table and it charges it
I think it's pretty sweet Yeah, I'd be into this mentioned overheating problems. I would be interested to see. Oh, yeah
How that goes? All right next up. I like it though. Whoa. Shall me buds five pro
Now they might look like just regular, you know
AirPods clones But they can stream music over wi-fi
They utilize qualcom's expanded personal area network to provide audio at up to 96 kilohertz 24 bit
Up to 4.2 megabit per second exceeding bluetooth bandwidth and if wi-fi is not available they switch back to bluetooth mode
That's pretty cool. They look bulky though
I don't care
Okay, as a dub said on flow plane no solar panels on them two out of ten
Okay I just like I don't know
If I'm at home, it's not like I don't have my phone on me if I'm not at home. I'm pretty much not using wi-fi
I don't know do they use wi-fi direct though because if they could do that then that's cool
I think it means that they're using wi-fi to the phone
Yeah, I think so. I think that's what it means not all devices handle wi-fi to multiple
Points very well though Like I I realized using the mac as my daily driver that you can't internet connections share your wi-fi connection on this
So I use that feature on Windows for flights I'll buy one in flight pass and then I'll share it with everyone that i'm with or with my phone
Like with my multiple devices and I can't do that on the mac
Which kind of blows like it can share it can internet connection share if you plug in a wired connection
And then you share over wi-fi it can do that, but it can't wi-fi share its wi-fi connection as far as I can tell
Here's another one This is
Wait, wait, where is it? Ah, here we go. Yes the samsung flex gaming concept
Hold on someone's hold on someone says yes, you can over bluetooth
Well, what am I connecting to it via bluetooth?
Might be able to with a usb wi-fi that yeah, I'm not doing that
Bluetooth wi-fi sharing
Man I I swear I googled this and I did not find it and I went into I had to like go deep into the settings and enable
internet connection sharing in some some submenu somewhere
And then it just didn't offer me the option Well, what I will say then at the very least is it's much easier in Windows. You just click a button
Just like you would on your phone or whatever
Okay, so looking at this next device. Have you have you brought it up yet? There you go
Looking at this next device It looks like the thumbsticks have to go into the holes on the other side
and the ab x y and left right up down
are like the slanted sides of the holes, which is
Horrible. Yeah, this is just a concept. This is not a real product. It's a cool idea. It's a cool concept
I don't want to use the arrow keys or ab x y at all ever
but It's a cool concept
So you have to thumb the holes Yeah, I think I think you like put your thumb in the hole and then have to like
Hit the side of the button Yeah, I'm not into that at all
I don't think so. Yeah, it might end up being okay, but I don't think I would like it
Yeah, I think I would dislike it so much that I would not use it. I wouldn't buy it
However, if you could if you could give me something where like
The thumbsticks or like a pop it or something and I can like push them in and I can just fold it flat
And have decent buttons or something I I could I could maybe get into that
I would like to be able to fold my My handheld gaming device because I do get sketched out about them when traveling
And if I could avoid having like a big carrying case for it
Um And could just fold it and then the like if I had a nice case on the back of it
That'd be pretty sick 80 dub and Floatplane chat says now I can rage quit like I'm hanging up on my boss
Yeah, sweet. I love it Okay, our last one is the samsung trifold smartphone concept called the asymmetric flip
for now similar to the galaxy z flip
But with two fold points
Like Why oh god
Why hmm Okay
Why yeah, well, that's
Something that someone why not just fold it in half
I mean it's a concept. These are concepts and like concept cars they're gonna include things that
Don't make it to market and that's the things we looked at. That's all of them
Cool. Um nice last week tech radar said
Built or published an article titled built versus bought why pre-built systems are always
superior to custom gaming PCs Uh, it starts by giving some background on zack as someone who loves to build rigs and even encourages people to keep building them
before immediately 180 and saying the following
The honest truth is that unless you're an it god who spent years pruning over every little detail of system building with
Intimate knowledge of all the latest and greatest hardware and its caveats
You're just not going to be able to compete with a consummate professional whose day job it is is to build gaming PCs
It's like comparing your dad's famous chili cone carring recipe to gordon ramsey's
The article does highlight some real issues from building your own pc
such as that it can be tough to get stock of the latest and greatest if that's what you're after especially because
SIs can often have deals that guarantee them better stock on those parts, although as we discussed earlier, not always
It also talks about qc from system integration integrators, which yes
Can be a big advantage to making sure that your computer arrives in working conditions
But if you've ever seen our secret shopper series, you'll know that qc can miss things
Including things that zack highlights that you won't have to worry about like BIOS updates cable management cooling and overclocking
There is one more comparison at the end of the article and I quote
It's like your car, right You're always going to get the folk who go around and build their own tweak the ones
They've got and get ridiculous horsepower out of an engine in ways that shouldn't be possible
Usually for some ridiculous investment of time or some of money along the way
Or alternatively you could save the drama and just buy a 400 horsepower ev or whatever your engine of choice is
Straight off the shop floor with few issues of any and do 100 miles per hour in less than five seconds
and quote Elijah puts in here
I found this quote funny because Jake t and I looked and there's no such thing as a 400 horsepower ev that can do that
um Our discussion question here is
As easy as it is to see the headline and possibly get upset
Can you think of any other reasons that pre-builds are better?
I would say the main one for me comes down to support after the fact
Like if their support sucks, then I see no reason to buy pre-built whatsoever
But if their support is good or offers Um types of support that you need like if you're buying it as a business and you need on site service, um
You know, I could see a pre-built making sense for that
Um, otherwise, I don't know man. I do think things can be very confusing and we do rail against
sort of the the misleading naming schemes that manufacturers use and um
The way that specs get obfuscated more and more and more pre-builds
But yeah, that's the thing is I think I don't see the difference between talking to an si and asking them to advise me
On buying a pre-built pc or talking to a sales rep at a computer part store and asking them to advise me on building a computer and honestly
I think comparing um, you know
As someone who builds computers to gordon ramsey
is like kind of ridiculous
Yeah Maybe maybe you're comparing it to like the gordon ramsey restaurant in the airport
Building computers like it's not as easy as some people make it out to be if you have never done it or you don't do it on the regular but
It isn't rocket science and I've gotten the kick out of like si's over the years that will
introduce their like their system builders as like
pc engineers or like system
system building engineers or whatever like here in canada engineer is a protected term you actually have to like
Have an education up to a standard to call yourself an engineer
But in other places it's not necessarily the case and there is
Nothing engineer about configuring a computer and putting it together. That's not engineering
um So yeah, it can be a little bit challenging when you're just getting your feet wet
But no, I don't think I can agree with this headline and I I and yeah, it's not engineering
I think it's time for us to move on to after dark because I have a place that I need to be that I kind of
Let get away from me seven minutes time wise. So uh, what what do we got in the in the
Curated birch messages. Oh Dan didn't curate too many this week. So
Let's go good work Yeah, we had a a lighter week than last week. I'll uh, I'll put it that way
Although I think every week is light compared to last week
All right, I have to do the magenta
Uh, let's see. What do we got? What do we got? Um, to Linus
What's the deal with not reviewing 12 gig cards on 4k developers should be able to add uncompressed textures without meaning
12 gigs is not enough for 4k. I play at 12 gigs and it looks great
I can't hear I can't he's muted. He's sorry. Um, we discussed this in our 90 70 and 90 70 x t review
And I forget what the game was was it last of us or
Crud I really don't remember but basically we we
highlighted some lag spikes that we were getting on the
The rtx 50 70 the 12 gig card that were not present on any of our 16 gig cards
Regardless of how much raw horsepower they had
And so for us the fact that that's a problem
right now today
Indicates to us that
The these these cards are not in the in the midterm even going to be suitable for 4k AAA gaming
And you know if we're talking about running league of legends at 4k or whatever then yeah, sure
But was it really a question if you're buying a 12 gig card
If league of legends was going to run probably not So you know for us the point of a review is not necessarily to show you exactly what FPS every game under the sun will run at
That's not what we're trying to achieve. What we are trying to achieve is to
contextualize The relative performance of these cards
And their relative price so you can make an informed decision
It's not the be all and end all if you want to know how that card runs an exact game
There's lots of channels out there that will upload like gameplay footage with FPS counters
Or there's lots of other reviewers out there that will have a different test suite
And you should absolutely go out and seek out those additional resources
We're just trying to give you the thousand foot view of how these cards compete with each other and in general
No, I don't think that moving forward. We can recommend
12 gig cards for 4k gaming
My guys wondering what your favorite tape-to-tape characters and perks are I'm hooked on the game
Oh, um I had oh dude. I had one run that I was using
Gawain Garetsky
Yeah, he's this knight character that levels up as you make your way through the different bosses
And uh, we basically put every perk on him so that as he got bigger and slower
He was still fast and he was a were you in that run luke?
Yeah, you were he was Comically tanky
Um, and then he also has the headshot redirect ability
Which is by far the most broken ability in the game Because you just you slap shot to one of your allies and they just like
Header like in soccer they header the puck into the net
And so you can just be racing up the wing have one of your allies go up the other wing
He was completely tanky. No one could even touch him We had the body check while while skating with the puck ability and I think we had the body armor on him
So if anyone even tried to Check him, they would get knocked over so I could just basically charge up the ice
Whack it off of luke's head. What do we get like 20 20 goals on the final boss?
We got 12 goals in the first period Yeah, final boss. Yeah, it was not even over 20. It was not even close
That that's the most broken run that we've done so far. I think yeah, yeah
I have a super broken run that I'm in the middle of right now, and I'm not finishing it on my own
I'm just on the first world, but dude. It is completely broken
I fossilized star for plus 20 speed on all my bench warmers. I got um
Gross serum growth serum. So everyone's big
And I got like a couple other things basically my bench warmers all have superstar stats
It's the team is cracked It's gonna be it's gonna be a great run
So I was gonna wait till they some humans can come and help me finish it because I bet I think I think it's a record breaking run
nice I really like researching pc parts and building pcs
So I take every opportunity to build a pc for a family member Linus. Do you still enjoy building pcs for yourself?
I enjoy it as long as I'm doing something different
I don't really like doing the same thing over and over again
um nice
So probably I think I probably had the most fun building a pc then I've had in
Definitely weeks probably months
Working on the machine that's on the other side of that wall over there. I'm so excited for that video. Oh, dude
Yeah, it's very different I don't know what was anything that we've done in a while. I don't know if it's practical
But it's so cool. It's a Kickstarter project that took eight years to finally be delivered and it's so sick
We got one. It looks absolutely Nothing like what they promised in their original Kickstarter. It is so much better and I'm I'm so excited
I'm so excited and and yeah, I had a blast alex and I built it together
And it was so much fun. And so yeah, I love I still love building pcs, but I don't really
I don't really love just like You know upgrading my motherboard
Like I kind of get locked into like trouble troubleshooting. I would say I still maybe enjoy more than just like building a pc
I like I like problem solving free dopamine
Hello, lld a question for luke. It looks like he's leaving so maybe not
No, no, no, I'm here. Okay. Uh, where is a place you want to check out that you've never been to?
We live in flathead valley in montana. Please come check us out
Flathead valley isn't montana what they call a um, wonderful state that everyone visits
Is a region no flathead valley looks amazing stunning natural beauty
Wow pictures look amazing. This place looks amazing. Look at this
Oh my goodness. I was like, why is there a picture of Dan in my good image results?
And then I moved it Look at the third picture in the results
That's incredible man
Steve j3d says montana is our canada. Yeah, okay that checks out
That's gorgeous. I would like it there. That's gorgeous
I don't actually uh, I don't have any north american travel
Um booked over the next little bit here
So we'll see how we'll see we'll see but it looks beautiful
Looks really beautiful. I've never been to a bamf. I'd really like to go to bamf. Um
That'd be pretty sweet. There's a bunch of aging countries that have been to that would be awesome
Um I was In iceland for like a very extended layover. I would like to actually go there for real
um I also want to go to like some
Less common destination countries though like I'd like to go to greenland. I'd like to go to
Some likes. Yeah, you mean america common areas
Oh If it becomes that maybe not os is on my list, uh, I really really sick never been there need to go to os
Yeah, I want to go scuba diving in australia. That's that's the next thing I actually want to do
That's a sad thing to hear Yeah, I'm just saying though
Last one awesome. Yeah Last one I got for you. People call it os don't they? Yeah, don't they?
They do some people in the comments were confused. Oh, yeah, you're you're not wrong. I mean australia
Yeah, yeah, yes Last one. Hey, lld line. If you've noted you're a fan of final fantasy tactics
Have you tried any of the mods or total conversions for the game? I'd recommend final fantasy tactics 1.3. Thanks for all the cool vids
Did I try one? No, I try to I try to final fantasy six mod that I really enjoyed
That I actually think you might have enjoyed better than the pixel remaster. I I'm honestly I'm kind of over the pixel remaster. Um
No, but I burned on it. I played it a little bit more too But like I was really into it when I first got into the game and it's it feels like it tapers off pretty hard
Would you like me to explain why?
Yes, yeah, the game was supposed to end on the floating continent
And then they like Realized that they had more room on the cart. This is what I've heard. This is what I've heard
They like realized that they had more room on the cart and that they
Like had more time in budget and they like
Made another like half of the game That honestly makes a lot of sense because it feels like there's a pretty notable quality shift right around that time
Because I was I was like genuinely like really into it for a while
Um, and then it's it's just it feels like it's kind of over and I'm at that point
So at this point, it's a little bit of a slog. I'll finish it, but it's a it's a little bit of a slog
But I the yeah the first let's call it first half because I didn't know how far in I was in the world of balance
Let's call it the first half the world of balance is what it's called
Was fantastic. It is super good super super good like a worth just playing that even
Even if you're not going to play the whole thing. Yeah, you could just pretend the game ends there and honestly you get you get most of it
Yeah Yeah, I should probably try a total conversion for final fantasy tactics or like a cool mod
Uh, man, I feel like I I feel like I did try a mod at some point
Like this it rings such a bell for me
Thank you for that Ha
I missed one at the front so now I'm like jumping at it for me at this point though
I think a big part of what I love about. Oh, no, I did. I tried war of the lions 1.3. That's like a different mod or something
Uh, or wait, no original project changes and content unique features. Okay. No, I don't know
I don't know I feel like I tried to try something at some point, but maybe I didn't get into it
But yeah, I I'd like to try something but For me going back to Final Fantasy Tactics a big part of it and honestly just the familiarity at this point like I if I was gonna
Dive into a new game. There's so many other games that
I feel like I should play first like what's that other uh, what's that tactics series that got
So many games and it's supposed to be so good. Um
Oh, no, it's for pc Uh games like games like this. Oh, no, this is terrible. I feel so bad. I think it's a western game
Someone help me. No, not fire emblem XCOM. That's the one. Yeah, like I've never played an XCOM game
Like how can I say I was sick? How can I say I'm a fan of the genre if I've never played an XCOM game?
Like that's ridiculous. So if I'm gonna jump into a new game, I should probably like
Play something I've never played before rather than a mod Yeah, people like it's different, but it's good. Yeah, exactly exactly
XCOM is fun. I was 99% is a miss is real with that series
I mean, yeah, you're gonna get that with any kind of tactics game and it it's always at the worst possible moment
That's why Dude anytime an ability is like it hits super hard, but low percentage. I'm like
F*** it. You're on the bench. You are seeing zero combat. I literally will not take anything that is not a guaranteed hit
Like I think my first couple playthroughs of Final Fantasy Tactics
I didn't even figure out that the archer like has evolutions because I literally just never used them because they missed so much
It was like forget it. You're done. You're out
Enemy unknown. I loved enemy unknown. I played it on I think it's called iron man where there's like permadeath
And you you only have one save like you can't go back ever and I I got to the very end of the game
and if I remember correctly it's like
I had beat the actually challenging part. I just needed to go into like one more room and the game was just gonna end
Um, but it glitched and I couldn't get through the wall
So I had like beat the game, but I couldn't see the ending so I had beat the game
But had to like youtube the ending
It was so disappointing
I youtube the ending of phantasy and I still feel icky about it, but
The final boss was just so tedious and such a slog like I made it through the first stage of it
And then I googled it and apparently there's two
more Like evolutions of the final boss and I'm just like forget this
Forget this. I'm done. That's good enough speaking of forget this. Do you need to go? I do so I'll see you again next week
Same bad time same bad channel Bye
Okay, I'm leaving
Bye
That Linus is leaving. Okay. Yeah, I'm but I'm good. I'm I'm good. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Goodbye
I'm alone I'm alone
I'm alone