The WAN Show - NVIDIA APOLOGIZED (sort of) - WAN Show December 18, 2020

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Save 10% at Ridge Wallet with offer code LINUS at https://www.ridge.com/Linus If you’re looking for a directory that supports heterogeneous OSs, or you need just SSO, MDM, LDAP, MFA – or all of the above – JumpCloud will make your job easier at https://cloud.jumpcloud.com/l/876401/2020-11-11/gy41fq Check out Seasonic's PRIME 850W Titanium on Amazon at https://lmg.gg/seasonicprime Check out Carpool Critics, our new movie podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt-oJR5teQIjOAxCmIQvcgA Timestamps (Courtesy of Pizza Thyme Pizza FanClub) 1:25 intro 2:02 More on Hardware Unboxed getting denied cards.  2:40 Nvidia apologies sort of for hardware unboxed ceasing getting cards  4:43 Luke is unsure if Nvidia is apologizing to save face or is sincere  6:00 Summary of the "scandal" between hardware unboxed and Nvidia  8:55 Luke thinks that Nvidia is doing this bc they are saving face.  12:40 Linus is trying to get someone from Nvidia to talk to him.  14:30 Linus burning bridges with Nvidia and meme-ing on them.  16:45 This PR does not make very much sense for Nvidia. 19:00 Cyberpunk 2077 review  20:22 Cyberpunk pulled from Sony play store   21:35 CD Project Red reputation has been messed up         22:42 Sony pulling Cyberpunk from play store  23:15 Cyberpunk unplayable on last gen consoles 26:40 Devotion Pulled from Good Old Games with pressure from the CCP  26:52 Contained unflattering references to [Winnie the Pooh] relating to the Taiwan situation  28:09 GOG/Steam caved to CCP  29:20 Twitter might not be representative sample of gamers' thoughts  30:24 Different Mentality in China versus USA  36:09 A poll of live viewers' opinions finds that opinions have worsened about CD Project RED 37:54 Microsoft might start to make ARM designs?  38:45 Microsoft may become Microhard if they get into hardware 39:57 Sponsor spots   40:11 jumpcloud dot com  41:08 10% off at ridge dot com slash linus  41:45 Seasonic has good PSUs 42:45 Antitrust lawsuits  42:55 Allegedly Google Has a monopoly over ads   43:25 Allegedly Facebook has been buying competitors and has a monopoly  44:01 America Has not exercised the laws in a long time  45:37 Google and Facebook account for 54% of advertising  46:35 Linus does not like the privacy violations done by Google et al. and prefers his form of ads 47:12 LTTSTOREDOTCOM 48:10  Linus talking about parenting and children's literacy  51:10 Superchats        51:18 Airpods review question        51:26 Paying for refunded shirts        51:39 Dual shock "low latency" 52:35 The Mandela Effect 52:55 Outro 53:18 Dell insider follow up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that goal to beat your personal best?

Keep chasing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. And welcome to the WAN Show, ladies and gentlemen. We've got a fantastic show for you lined up today. We've got a fantastic show for you lined up today. NVIDIA apologized to some people for the whole shenanigans that went on last week. We'll talk about that a little bit. In other news,

Devotion has been pulled from good old games in yet more positive PR for CD Projekt Red. Remember when CD Projekt Red was like the darlings? And now they're like... Everyone. Yeah. for CD Projekt Red. Remember when CD Projekt Red was like the darlings? Everyone? Over the course of like a three week period, just Yeah, a little uncomfortable.

A little uncomfortable. What else we got this week? Google is getting sued in antitrust in a case that should probably go along with a finally. And then also there was a massive hack of the CDC, Time Warner Cable, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Secret Service, Visa USA. All of those are maybe a little sketchy because SolarWinds Orion software was hacked.

Oopsie daisies. Hooray. Intro time. this is great lost wanderer says i feel bad for cd project red do you though do you really did they not make their own bed here like i uh i don't know i don't know if they're the victim. Why don't we jump right into our first topic of the week, which is, of course, NVIDIA apologizing, sort of. Now, when I say sort of, I don't mean that they sort of apologized to Hardware Unboxed. In fact, the apology to Hardware Unboxed was pretty good sounding to me uh he went ahead and published it i can't remember where but i think it's in my twitter dm so i'm just gonna read it

out from there uh oh man we got so much twitter dm going on here oh there's a big history luke if you can find it sooner. Ah, here it is. All right, this is great. Great message from him. Yeah, this reads like BDR actually wrote it. Hi, Steve. I wanted to reach out again and apologize for my previous email. It was not well-worded

and may be impacted by a bit of lockdown fatigue. We absolutely respect the press and their editorial integrity. We welcome you and Hardware Unboxed to NDA press briefings, access to press material, early press drivers, and access to our partner slash AIC boards, as well as Founders Edition boards. Let me know if you have any questions. Brian Del Rizzo. And you know what? That does read a lot more to me like it was actually written by BDR, which the other one to be clear so many people

have raised their pitchforks calling for brian del rizzo's head guys here's the thing brian del rizzo works for nvidia um an email like that never goes out without prior approval from someone. I mean, he's going to usually be that someone. He would usually be that someone, which is why the fact that it was signed by him means someone else looked at it. There is always another set of eyes on a communication like that. And the fact that it doesn't sound like

it was written by him at all means that clearly this was, this must have been a whole mess of a thing over there. And on the subject of messes of a thing, it was pretty clear why Nvidia immediately walked it back. But the question that I have, Luke, for you, is do you feel like they issued their apology the next day like it happened literally the day after the wan show it was on saturday that they

that they issued the first apology then they sent out another message it was either the day after or on monday or something like that do you NVIDIA apologized because they're sorry or because they're sorry they got caught? That's what I want to know. I don't know. One of the issues with entities that big is I know they become personified and that's like literally a thing beyond just perception. Like that's a way that things work. But it is so many different

moving parts and like having worked with them before i would definitely say that some people there were probably sorry and that some people there were probably sorry that they got caught um and i don't i don't necessarily know which one the overall is. I'm not sure if... I don't see... This doesn't necessarily look like the exact same one I'm seeing, but the one you're reading, did it end with Vanks, BDR? This one says... No, just Brian Del Rizzo.

Yeah, okay. So here, one second second i just want to send you this sure and checking chat okay so this is a different one uh brian del rizzo has reached out a second time so this was posted on twitter by hardware unboxed okay some people are asking for a little bit of context for this. They apparently missed the WAN show last week. NVIDIA reached out to Hardware Unboxed, a tech YouTuber, and basically said, if you guys don't get in line with how we feel about ray tracing being the future of gaming, and if you guys don't put more emphasis on ray tracing performance in your reviews,

we are not going to continue to seed you Founders Edition cards, which is a lot bigger of a deal than it sounds like. Because not getting seeded Founders Edition cards basically means you can't do launch day content. And then the end of it was really the worst. I don't know what the worst part. It was one of the worst parts for sure. The end of it was, should your editorial direction change, we'd be happy to revisit this or something along those lines. It was brutal.

So we took issue with that because it was an attack on not just Hardware Unboxed's editorial freedom to review the product as they see fit, but also a shot across the bow of pretty much anyone who covers tech and who is at the mercy of NVIDIA to cut them off and harm their business. And so we took issue with that. We called it out and they walked it back basically immediately. So the first email was the one I'm about to read now. Hi, Steve. Thanks for your note.

I just wanted to say again how sorry I am for my original email. I overstepped my bounds, and it's as simple as that. I love seeing all the ways reviewers test and report on our products, and I value your contributions. Suggesting that I would withhold samples because I didn't agree with your commentary is simply inexcusable and crossed the line. So that's the thing. It didn't suggest. It didn't suggest.

It was a statement. clear i failed myself my colleagues and the amazing community of reviewers i consider my friends you all work so hard in service of the gaming industry we love you deserved better from me i hope you will forgive my mistake and give me the opportunity to be of service to you in the future it would be great if you can share this with your fans so they know how i feel. That was the first retraction. So you basically are saying some people at NVIDIA are sorry and some are sorry they got caught. Is that the vibe?

I think so. Because you got to remember, it's not like this is the first time NVIDIA has ever behaved in an anti-partner or anti-consumer manner. Yeah, I just think with a company that size, I think it's hard. Like if you tried to, if you said like, okay, you know what, I am globally personifying this. Everyone is upset about the banner being over our chins, apparently. Are we both too low in frame? i fixed it go ahead um i just yeah i don't know if we're deciding like no we have to decide

a general attitude for the company as a whole i would i mean especially after reading that it feels that they're sorry they got caught. Suggesting that I would, yeah, no, BS. And then it would be great if you could share this with your fans. Please, I don't want the heat on me anymore. Yeah, it feels like they're sorry they got caught. But I am also certain that there are people there that are sorry in general. That's all I'm saying. I'm sure.

I know for a fact, I can't get anyone on the record about any of this, which is very frustrating, but I know for a fact, there are people at Nvidia that were just like, I don't even have any marketing like training. And I read that email and I was immediately like, how was this going to be anything but a disaster?

Like a raging ball of fire coming down upon us like what could they possibly have been thinking one of the interesting things that stood out to me and i'm probably chasing a nothing burger but the original email was signed off so form formally yeah and it had his full name and then i think it had the like in quotes bdr thing yeah this one's just bdr yeah well i've i have seen brian sign emails lots of different ways so it's i don't know it's tough it's tough to draw a conclusion there like if we want to get into like you know forensic typing word use analysis it feels like maybe either like maybe one of them is sent because your your email is probably going to auto signature so like one of them is sent from like a team account one of them is sent from sure his own i don't know i have no idea it's just i

just it feels so weird to me that it's it's being handled this way at all so i'm trying to like pick it apart and be like who the heck is even involved because it's hard to tell uh patrick h says y'all need to realize this wasn't bdr's decision to make he had to write the hard email and is the messenger he definitely could have felt bad writing the email in the first place that's happened before for sure yeah but i just don't believe that's how it went down um i to be clear i don't believe that, like, I don't know. Honestly, I've been trying to get someone from NVIDIA, including BDR, to talk to me about this. And pretty much the answer has been, we sent an email to Steve. It's water under the bridge.

That's all I have to say about that. And my response to that is a couple of things. Number one is, okay, you've addressed that you did the wrong thing, but you haven't explained how that ever could have possibly happened in the first place. And without a postmortem on this, honestly, the apology rings kind of hollow for me. Without a post-mortem on this, honestly, the apology rings kind of hollow for me. And number two is you apologized to Steve, but Steve wasn't the only member of the media that was outraged that you or someone respected us so little. And while technically you only like punched out at one thing. The community feels the hit. Like it's, if you're a lord over some lands and you go roll into someone's place

and take a bunch of their stuff, everyone's going to be freaked out and you need to address everybody. Yeah. So, yeah. Hans von Twitchy says, the first email was full of PR speak. They expected it to leak. They didn't expect the magnitude of backlash.

They did want to strong arm the community, just didn't expect the community to fight back. That's my read on it right now. I just still don't know what the forces at play within NVIDIA are. And this is something that it would be very easy for me to drop if I could get someone over there to just talk to me and say, look, this is what happened. I'm not going to go on the record. You cannot talk about this. I would accept that. But, you know, the person who is boneheaded enough to have thought

that that was a good idea, they're not going to interact with the media anymore. And or they're too senior. There's ultimately nothing we can do about it, but that's how it went down. Whatever it is, because the explanation here is, guys, don't pick up your pitchforks and go after BDR. I don't pick up your pitchforks and go after BDR. I don't actually think, and it was my initial reaction, my midterm reaction, and even now that I've done more

digging, talked to some NVIDIA partners, it is still my reaction that that did not sound like something he would write. It sounds like something that for whatever reason he had to sign and it doesn't make a ton of sense to me um so they apologized to hardware unboxed they have not actually addressed the cause of the behavior uh they haven't addressed how they're going to avoid the behavior in the future so to me this is a little like um you know a parent uh hitting one of their kids, coming back and saying, hey, I'm sorry. Here's some ice cream and an Xbox. And all the other kids are like, yo, what the was that? And they're like, see you later.

You know, there's no like, hey, I was drinking and i'm not gonna drink anymore there's no uh yeah you know what i'm sorry you guys yeah i'm sorry you guys had to see that it's just um yep uh okay bye-bye we're not the same company that brought you geforce partner program um we're we're not the same company that literally told 3dfx employees to burn the drivers instead of releasing like updated drivers for 3dfx cards no no we're not that company we really we've learned you know we're cool now we're good we're nice um you know don't worry about that i i don't know i just uh Um, you know, don't worry about that. I don't know. I just, uh, it kind of, if I, if I have to guess, and you know, maybe every time I talk about this, I am,

I am poisoning the well even further, uh, with respect to my chances of ever having a good relationship with Nvidia again. Um, but the only conclusion that I can really draw here is that the toxicity goes up very, very high. Yeah. That's the only real conclusion I can draw. The fact that these things happen, NVIDIA treats partners with contempt and nothing ever changes means that it's just the attitude there. And I know there are exceptions. I know for a fact there are exceptions. But maybe this is the kind of thing that like at this point, I've got nothing left to lose. And it just requires a dedicated video about it. Just like, look, these are all the things that you talk to literally any nvidia partner about and they can talk your ear off about the kind of bull that nvidia puts them through

but they're in no position to speak out because either it's above their pay grade um or b they would be they would be fired or they would negatively impact their company. You should go like full, you should get like an outside, not related to the tech industry, investigative journalist. And just like have them host the video and everything. That'd be sweet. Interesting. Yeah, Meat says, NVIDIA screwed aib's hard this gen yeah i mean that's yet another just like i don't even know what the point is like who benefits i don't think anybody benefited from nvidia giving themselves such a leg up in terms of board design for the RTX 30 series. Like why? It doesn't benefit consumers

because the vast majority of consumers are going to be buying AIB cards, not NVIDIA Founders Edition cards. It doesn't benefit NVIDIA because it ends up creating negative PR when there's like launch boards failing. It doesn't benefit their AIBs because they have to either recall or fix boards on their way out to consumers, or they have to, you know, pay a bunch of overtime and, you know, go into crunch mode for no reason whatsoever in order to get a good quality product out there in time for launch. Like it doesn't benefit consumers. Did I already say that? Because they have a chance to get broken products for no reason. Like, what is the point?

Why? Why? Why are you doing this? Why don't you just be cool, you know? Why don't you just chill out a little bit? I don't get it. I don't know. Anyway, why don't we just move on to our next topic?

Because at this point, I don't think they're ever going to address it. And I don't think that there's anything I can do to change them. Yeah, they've been in this situation a number of times and they just never say anything about it. Yeah. Or if they do say something it's like sorry we're not going to fundamentally change anything about our attitude but yeah we're definitely sorry yeah it's um but they're kind of they're kind of too big to fail in that way too they have so much momentum people are just going to keep buying their stuff oh of

course they have so much momentum in the enterprise space as well, which tends to have a lot less reaction to these types of things. Yeah. Well, consumers don't ever even end up hearing about it. Yeah. So. So why don't we jump right into the Devotion GOG China thing? Do you want to run us through what went down here? Sure.

Yeah. CD Projekt Red. I think if you actually hold on should we do this out of order can you just recap your uh cyberpunk 2077 review first for me dude i told you i i okay so i played for like two hours and it was just it was just horrible i don't remember the exact amount of time i played for but it wasn't very long and and honestly probably about half an hour in it was just like morbid curiosity of like is this really this bad um and they i don't know my my the thing that i went over was they took this incredibly uh sorry i just keep getting absolutely spammed. One second.

Okay, I'm back. There's so much life in it in terms of what it looks like. Yeah. The city is beautiful, but it is completely lifeless. There's nothing to it. The AI all feels fake. The conversations feel bad. The story is not very engaging.

There's like, it's just, and it feels quite a bit, when something is this hyped up, even if it was entirely hyped up by the community and not the company, which is not the case, but even if that was it, you feel kind of lied to in these scenarios. So. which is not the case. But even if that was it, you feel kind of lied to in these scenarios. So the biggest own was probably Cyberpunk 2077 being removed from the PlayStation Store this week.

Do you want to run through this? Yeah, so Sony announced late Thursday that it would offer full refunds to people who purchased Cyberpunk 2077. And that is kind of sort of what I was alluding to previously. The feels like you were lied to thing. Yeah. You see all this footage from the game and then the footage from the like original PS4 and original Xbox versions is if you haven't seen it, it's like actually hilarious.

It doesn't even remotely look like the same game i don't know if you can find any of it linus um but it it looks like a literally completely different game like it's uh the fact that they were okay with selling that to anyone at any level it's hilarious um one really really funny thing that i saw was people pointed out that there's a like collector's edition of the console and it barely runs on the like cyberpunk 2017 collector's edition version of the console and it barely runs so that was pretty great um but yeah cyberpunk went for cd project red went from like the absolute darling of the industry like something that i found interesting for a long time was they would do these posts um which is something along the lines of like buy buy the witcher or buy cyberpunk on gog and

cd project red gets 100 of the proceeds like because you're you're like funding this tiny indie company is what it feels like but yeah but they're actually uh a goliath uh yeah they're massive and and there's all this stuff coming out about like these these like insane crunch times um but then the game looks horrible on old hardware yeah and it's just not really winning in the reviews department. I haven't even looked this up since last show. But I'm going to look it up right now. Okay, so the user score has increased a little bit. The reviewer meta score has gone down to 87 out of 100.

The user score has gone up to 7.1 out of 10 sony making the move to allow to to basically pull it from the store though i i don't think that has this been done before just based on people feeling so baited by a game because it's not like it's not like sony has pulled a game for being bad and that's not really what they're doing here yeah like it's not it's not that bad it's just not what people expected but especially visually and and like actual gameplay style like there's there's examples of assets not loading in so you can just like walk through them right because the asset hasn't actually loaded yet and then you're like glitched in a wall and like or something else is going on like it's just it's it's basically broken on the old consoles um so yeah i don't know microsoft is also offering refunds to the game

but has not taken it off the store yet um city project red has posted a few updates apologizing for their situation um yeah the refund from the playstation store is not automatic you do need to request it and i've heard there are some issues with that process although i think that happens almost any time a massive massive amount of people request refunds is the the process of getting that refund comes a little bit clogged um i haven't heard anyone crying actual foul play there yet just that it gets a little clogged um but yeah it's it's interesting the game won't be removed from your library if you choose to keep it which is interesting as well sorry um but yeah i don't think there's a ton else to say there it was it was ripped apparently digital foundry i haven't seen this actually but

it's probably fantastic digital foundry has a video um talking about all of its issues on last gen and like yeah it looks so rough even just like having skimmed through the yeah 810p 1440 by 810 dynamic resolution like yeah and it's not running at great frame rates like there's there's some parts of the game that they said were basically unplayable on last gen consoles just because they were so um they were there was so much motion and the animations were so stuttery that you just kind of couldn't complete the objective which is pretty which is pretty tough and sort of raises the question like, A, you know, did CD Projekt Red ever like try to play through this game? And B, if they didn't,

then why did they seem like they went out of their way to not show the community any footage of the game running on those consoles? Like, it's one of those things where I kind of look at it and I go, you know, yeah, I understand you want to sell as many copies of the game running on those consoles. Like, it's one of those things where I kind of look at it and I go, you know, yeah, I understand you want to sell as many copies of the game as possible. And you also want to be inclusive to as many people as possible who want to play it. Not everybody can afford a PlayStation 5

or an Xbox series. And even if they could, not everybody can even get their hands on it right now. So yeah, when you launch your game, you want people to be able to to play it but maybe this is one of those situations where it should have just been a next-gen exclusive slash pc title that simple you know ah i think even and like maybe i'm here, but I think even releasing a thing and putting a warning on the store when you buy it,

like if you try to buy it and you're on one of those old consoles, having a warning that you have to say yes to, saying like, this is going to run poorly. When you buy this, you're getting it on both consoles. You should really play it on the new console, but you do have access to it on this one. I think that would have alleviated some frustrations.

And then CD Projekt Red went and made their PR troubles worse. Let's talk about Devotion. Yeah, okay. So Devotion is like a horror game, as far as I know, that had some controversial things in it. It contains unflattering references to chinese president did it did in the initial release on steam it did and some of the backstory there is that this is a taiwanese developer um and it's not just like the ccp it's not just the chinese

communist party that gets upset about the whole Taiwan. Is it part of China? Is it not part of China question? There's actually a lot of just people who live in China who do not see it from the Taiwanese perspective is one way of putting it. So there's a lot of sensitivity around that topic so a Taiwanese developer having like you know Winnie the Pooh uh memes about you know China's uh direct political statements for sure like they were trying to aggravate um now with that or not it's just it's that's true uh the developer did say after the release

that uh you know those were placeholder assets and were never meant to be seen in the final release but uh it wasn't enough to stem the backlash so way back in spring 2019 it was pulled from steam in all territories for red candle the developer to perform unspecified fixes but then it just like never returned so now let's fast forward to today what just happened uh gog pulled it off their platform uh red candle released a or where's gog statement one second gog announced on twitter that after receiving many messages from gamers, they decided to not list their game in their store. Red Candle also put out a statement saying that, though regretful, we are willing to understand and respect GOG's decisions. And for, and okay,

so there's a different statement. For the players looking forward to Devotions re-release, please accept our most sincere apology. This is a difficult predicament to overcome but we won't stop striving so uh red candle games had tweeted earlier this week that the game would come out on gog on december 18th and the store link has since been pulled it's gone so there's speculation in the community and by speculation i mean um people are basically pretty sure what's going on here that this had nothing to do with gamers reaching out to cd project red being upset that they were going to have the game on their store and it seems like if you go on a platform like Twitter, that gamers are pretty much unanimous in their belief that CD Projekt Red, who owns GOG, for those who don't know,

I don't think we ever actually clarified that, that CD Projekt Red is just kowtowing to the Chinese government and is refusing to have anything controversial on their platform in order to keep from running afoul of the CCP. However, it's important to note that Twitter is banned in China. I was just going to say, yeah, that's not... The gamer thing could actually be true, but it might not be a demographic that you're going to see on Twitter. Exactly.

So it might be something where you just don't have exposure to the gamers who are upset about this. It could be Chinese gamers. Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't still be outraged at everyone, whether it's CD Projekt Red or Valve or Epic Games or anyone for not allowing this game on their store, because at the end of the day, there's a couple of questions here, right? Like there's, there's what do gamers think of it? And

then there's just, you know, what's more important, being free to criticize the government, or not being free to criticize the government. And yes, these are private platforms. It's not in a private space. And if you want to talk about American First Amendment rights to free speech, they only really apply to public forums, public areas of discussion, and being critical of the government. It doesn't apply in private places and it doesn't apply to criticizing private businesses. But it's still supposed to be a guiding principle and it's something that people are still understandably

extremely upset with CD Projekt Red for not standing up for. Even if it was actual customers who were angry that they were allowing this type of political speech which isn't even apparently in the game anymore they're just they don't want to hear from this developer ever again because they have the audacity to say something negative about the chinese government um there are still games from Red Candle Games available on Steam. I'm not 100% certain about GOG, I could check. So as a developer, they haven't been entirely axed yet.

But this game in particular is not being allowed to see light. It's fascinating to me to have so much sort of nationalistic pride that the mere fact that a game criticizes the leader of my country makes me enraged. I don't get it. Maybe is just like a canadian thing like i don't have like any kind of personal if someone's like yeah justin trudeau he's he's dumb or bad i'm like okay like okay that's all right that's your that's your opinion um you know that could be like yeah it's a very different depending on the context i might even agree with you uh it depends what we're talking about

that's been widely accepted here for a long time um like there there were there were games i remember on like addictinggames.com yeah that like were making fun of american presidents um and it's like yeah so so what and just no one no one cared at all um but so it's strongly different mentality um it's hard to speak for a place that we've spent extremely little time in and know not enough about. Sorry. See, people seem to be, people seem to be under the impression that I am somehow siding with the CCP right now. What?

Sometimes I just, I look at the comments on this show and I go, what, what alternate YouTube window did you have open while you were commenting on my video? You know, is there anything that I've said that sounds anything like CD Projekt Red was right to pull this game? All I was saying is that there could be legitimacy around it being users that are pointing it out.

Yes. That it's just, it's probably users from a very specific area users from a very specific area that have very limited access to alternate views um access only to censored media um and so you know i i get it not i get it i i see it i just i have a very difficult time putting me in that putting myself in that kind of headspace to to think that you know somehow uh an attack on you know the leader's appearance of my country is like this like personal attack on me as a person uh i i don't understand it it's bizarre to me i i've always kind of had the view of like if if it's a very respectful leader they shouldn't care about something that petty and unimportant anyways um hans von twitchy says usa and canada are used to low quality political leaders. China, Singapore, et cetera, are proud of their high quality,

very capable, genuinely helping the country leaders. It's okay though. At the end, it's in parentheses. That's their mindset. You know, so is North Korea. That doesn't make it right. And that doesn't make it accurate. It just, it's something.

Right. Yeah. So anyway, it's... We could do a weird poll. It's a bad look. It's a bad look for CD Projekt Red. And while I recognize that the feedback may have actually been from gamers,

I think some things are a bigger deal than what some gamers within a given demographic thinks. Should we see what the community thinks? We can. I don't think it's going to be any kind of surprise. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even think there's any point. I think it's going to be 99% CD project red did the wrong thing.

And 1%, uh, people using a firewall right now. I got a better one. Yeah. We should ask the community what they, what they think about CD project red now, or we can even maybe include a change. Like, did you dislike them before? And you dislike them now? Did you dislike them before?

And you like them now? Did you like them before, but you dislike them before and you dislike them now? Did you dislike them before and you like them now? Did you like them before but you dislike them now? Did you like them before and do you still like them now? I don't even understand the point of this poll. Like, okay, there. Here's your poll that you insist on having. Here's your poll that you insist on having. Okay, your opinion of CD Projekt Red has improved or gotten worse.

All right, are you happy? Create poll. That's not a big deal. I just think it's interesting, like with the release of Cyberpunk and with these changes and stuff, like has your mind share of CD Projekt Red changed? I don't think it's interesting at all.

I think it's obvious, but there you go. All right, I spammed it in the YouTube chat. No, no. You know what, Luke? No, you can have your poll. You can have your poll. I'm putting it in the float plane chat right now. I'm hitting Twitch with it. There you go. There's your poll, Luke. There's your poll. If it's unchanged, just don't answer the poll. All right. There you go. Here's your results. There you go. Here's your results. Display capture. Your opinion of CD Projekt Red has... Okay, yeah.

Basically gotten worse. And a big surprise to nobody. All right. Unchanged. Only other answer I saw coming up there. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. It's okay. Microsoft is allegedly working on ARM processors.

Pretty big news, right? Yeah. This is also not in the doc, but I just thought it was really interesting. Now, this is supposed to be happening, apparently, is rumored to be happening. Bloomberg reported. Is it a rumor or is it real? I'm not sure if we know. They say it's happening. It's using ARM-limited designs to reduce the process that will be used in its data centers.

Yeah, okay. So it's apparently, ah, see, they say this is happening, but I don't know that this is actually confirmed. You guys will have to let me know. i don't actually have any notes because this is something i wanted to add solely because i wanted to make the joke that we're going to have to change it to micro hard if they actually make their own processors instead of microsoft and yeah my micro hard you know it's going to be, it's exciting. You know what I mean? It's exciting for Microsoft, MicroHard, excuse me, to take on Apple directly this way.

So the more solid reporting is that they're working on this for the data center. So this would be like a competitor for Amazon's Graviton processors. And then the more wishy-washy report is that these could in the future end up in a direct competitor to the MacBook Air in the form of something like a Surface product where Microsoft is trying to take on Apple head-to-head with a deeper level of integration between the software and the hardware.

It would be like micro- micro firm, you know? It's soft and hard. It does say here the company's chip design unit responds to Jason Zander, head of the Azure cloud business. So yeah, that would make sense. It would be a lot more like data center server focused. Yeah, I'm excited.

I'm excited. Also excited about remembering to do sponsor spots right now before I just unexpectedly, randomly, suddenly have to duck out at about 6.30 because I have that badminton match. So the show is brought to you today

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We've got an Amazon link down below. You can learn more at csonic.com, but it's 80 plus titanium efficiency. It's got super, super quiet operation with its fluid dynamic bearing fan. They've got their premium hybrid fan control, which actually keeps the fan off when it's not heavily loaded. Microtolerance load regulation, 12-year warranty, and of course, you can learn more at csonic.com hybrid fan control which actually keeps the fan off when it's not heavily loaded micro tolerance load regulation 12-year warranty and of course you can learn more at csonic.com or check it out at amazon.com we're going to have that linked below all right there were a couple of other things we said we were going to talk about on the show uh do we want to go through the solar winds orion software hacked i don't think think we technically announced that in our four topics, but we can.

Oh, no, we don't have to do that then. What did we talk about for our headline? We can speak for antitrust. All right, sure. Yeah, what else is new? Hit me. Ten state attorney generals have accused Google of illegally abusing its monopoly over essentially ad delivery online. A lot of their points are based around the fact that Google essentially owns like the whole pipeline, like the whole ad buying process is owned by Google,

that they've been buying up companies in the space, doing a lot of anti-competitive things. In October, the Justice Department and 11 states said Google had illegally maintained a monopoly over online search engines and the ads that appear in users' results. And last week, the FTC and 40-plus states accused Facebook of illegally crushing competition by acquiring younger rivals, which has been their entire business model for a while, and argued that the company should be broken up. In 2007, this was actually huge. Google bought DoubleClick, which offered advertising technology and acted as a marketplace

in a deal that has since been criticized as central to Google's dominance abso-freaking-lutely. Yep. Google now controls software at every stop of the ad sales process, which is, which is what I was talking about earlier. It's, it's, it's interesting. This is something I believe we've talked about on WAN show quite a few times, which is that like America hasn't really been using their antitrust laws in ways that they used to in the past or in ways that seem to be the way that they should be using them. Yeah. It's interesting to see

america kind of flexing those laws again um but yeah um interesting google claims it competes with a vast array of rivals so i guess yeah we'll we'll see we'll see how this plays out i mean honestly i would love to see more antitrust. Honestly, the entire FANG, is that how you pronounce it? Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. I'd like to see all of them held to a higher standard than they have been over the last, I'd say, 10 to 15 years. We'll see how it goes, though. Well, the FANG thing is definitely interesting to bring up

it's i i think people mostly like that acronym because it sounds cool and i use it too because it is cool uh but it like leaves some things out that should probably be there and it includes like netflix which while they're awesome and gigantic they i don't think they necessarily represent the same types of actions as some of the other companies in there. Um, but that's fair. Yeah. It's that's, that's pretty fair. If anything, Netflix is a less advantaged player in their space. Yeah. I'm sure if they were more advantaged, they would be doing the same things. Um the the two companies also known as google and facebook accounted for 54 percent of u.s digital advertising in 2019 dang with google share at 31 percent and facebook's share at 23 that is massive freaking crazy we'll see if facebook loses some of that

share though apple is rolling out that update to ios 14 that is going to make it much harder for facebook to track users on ios devices and basically the two are kind of sparring right now with facebook saying this is a bad thing this is going to affect and this is going to affect advertisers ability to get better better cpms and more relevant ads to your face holes and apple says well people are more than welcome to have the most relevant ads to your face holes and apple says well people are more than welcome to have the most relevant ads to their face holes they just have to opt into it now so yeah i'm with apple on this one personally i mean it's also great for me because all of our digital advertising is around, you know, building an audience that we kind of know what you guys are into and then talking to you directly about that stuff instead of doing it in like a scummy, you know, listening to your microphone on your phone way. So, yeah, I love it. If we could have a return to people just watching the content that

they watch and getting served, you know, ads or, or sponsors or whatever that's relevant to that, it seems like a good step backwards to me. And I think that's pretty much it. Oh yeah. Speaking of which, lttstore.com, we've actually got nothing to really call out this week other than to say thank you guys very much for your support. We sold through almost all 17,000 mousepads that we ordered. I thought 17,000 mousepads was a lot. I thought it was crazy. There's only a couple of sizes left.

So if you guys want to get one, they're there, but not for long. We have more coming but probably not until late february to mid-march sometime in that time frame the good news though is that stealth hotties stealth hotties stealth hoodies are restocked water bottles are restocked in all colors and we have a bunch of graphic tees back in stock we've still got lots of toques uh we've still got lots of cpu pillows and tons still got lots of CPU pillows and tons of board books. I wish we had user reviews for the board books because all of the feedback I've seen about it so far has been incredible.

I just wish there was another place where I could just go sit and get my ego boost from reading people's comments on the board book. I've even had people sending me pictures, tagging me on Twitter with them reading it to their baby and stuff as just as someone for whom child literacy is such a big deal it's just heartwarming for me to see people just it doesn't matter what it's about like that's the biggest lesson when it comes to when it comes to child literacy it doesn't matter what your kid's reading just make sure they're reading if it's like a pokemon uh uh what's that stupid pokemon book that uh our eldest used to just sit and read for hours on end

i don't i don't remember it was like basically like a creaturepedia of like pokemon it's like it's it's not it's not this is not intellectual reading material by any stretch of the imagination but for me it was just exciting to see him with his nose buried in a book for hours on end because that's the building block that's foundational yeah they can go somewhere from there pretty easily at least they're learning the process of reading and whatnot exactly exactly so it's really exciting to me honestly i've had people both internally and externally ask me, you know, like, when's the ABCs of computers? You know, like, because we already did ABCs of gaming.

And I'm kind of looking for a new challenge. I wouldn't mind doing something that's more, like, story-driven, but I haven't really decided yet. Like a choose-your-own-adventure game? A choose- decided yet so we could choose your own adventure game no not like that um something more like uh like with actual characters and you know like the computer family or something gamer family like i don't know what it would be but where it has it has you know life lessons but sort of more related to gaming and technology um you know how like you know bernstein bears will have like a fun like it tells a story but there's there's always like a lesson you know like be don't don't judge people based on their

appearances so you can even have a lesson that's just like, don't pre-order things. Obviously, you'd want to frame it more. No, I'm serious, though. You'd want to frame it. Yeah, you'd want to frame it more in like a kid sort of friendly way. Like, you know, you could have a lesson about, you could have a lesson about like loot boxes as well. So they could go and they could learn that if they waste all their allowance money on this, they're going to end up disappointed when what they could have done and they could learn that if they waste all their allowance money on this they're gonna end up disappointed when what they could have done is they could have just bought something

that made them that they knew was going to make them happy in the first place instead of gambling like so having like anti-gambling messaging um just like sort of pro consumer jealousy too because like if they got too jealous and wanted to buy some cosmetic box in a game they don't even get the thing that they wanted and then they can't play with their friends because their friends are all playing this other game but they can't afford to buy it exactly exactly that's cool yeah so that'd be pretty neat um i've got like two super i've got time for like two super chats um ilia you sent like three them, so I'll respond to one of yours. Yes, we're going to include the THX Pandas

in the review of the AirPods Max. Yes. Philip, paying for some shirts that got refunded before they arrived. Go LTT store. Oh, okay. Thanks, Philip. Maybe we thought it was lost in shipping or something like that. Thanks for sending that over.

Melody says, Dual dual shock has been doing reliable low latency bluetooth since 2006 um define low latency like it's i guarantee you it's not like sub one millisecond latency so if you want to talk about like bluetooth audio and performance being you know know, not low latency enough. Yeah, it's a different, that's a different game. Thanks, Christian Isaac. Thanks, Andy Boy Pabble. Gamers Nexus apparently sent some people over to the stream. That's cool. Thanks, Steve.

And that's it. Thank you guys very much for tuning in to The WAN Show. We will see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel. Bye. Oh, right. I got to click this button. Okay, hold on a second.

Claptrap, the Bear Stain Bears bears teaching kids how the mandel effect works okay it's bren stain it's s-t-a-i-n i thought it was bernstein for years but that is actually not how it's spelled i know nobody says it like that but it i don't make the rules all right see you i wonder where it started it just looks like that i don't know I wonder where it started. It just looks like that. I don't know. Oh, sorry, Floatplane.

Yeah, there is one, actually. We did hear back from the Dell the dell insider they said they can provide all the proof that i asked for i actually emailed them back today i've been a little slow on my emails lately but i emailed them back today asking for all of that and uh invited them to join the show at some point in the future if they if everything checks out cool yeah i am uh based on their allegations uh it's not a good look for dell are they wanting the anonymity would you have to like voice changer them or something i don't know how to handle it because yes they uh do they are requesting anonymity so we'll see how that works it'd be cool to do like an old news network thing where you put like like a fake shadow in front of them yeah yeah and then like voice changer them that'd be cool we'll see we'll see and