The WAN Show - NVIDIA might ACTUALLY be EVIL... - WAN Show December 11, 2020

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

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like immediately turned green i guess that's uh because it just wasn't actually doing anything okay so supposedly we're live. Okay. And welcome to the WAN Show, ladies and gentlemen. This is going to be a pretty emotional stream for me today because one of the topics, the headline topic, is something that is very, very near to my heart, something I'm extremely passionate about and something that within the last couple of hours has had further development, some of which I can talk about, some of which I can't, that have led me to be extremely... I'm going to use exactly the same word that I used to the person that is involved in this.

Extremely upset. I am extremely upset right now. This is a bad situation and it's one that we really need to talk about. So, of course, our first topic of the day is Hardware Unboxed, who, quite frankly, I don't even have a pre-existing relationship with. I've exchanged a greeting with him like once at a trade show, which I didn't even remember he reminded me of it. But other than that, my first time ever speaking to Steve was last night when I saw a tweet that was sent out by him. Massive shout out to our community, by the way, for bringing it to my attention. Sorry, this is just the topics of the show. We'll get into this later. But Hardware Unboxed has apparently been taken off

the list for receiving GeForce Founders Edition review samples due to a focus on rasterization over ray tracing. And that might not sound like the biggest deal ever, but it actually is. This is an enormous, like this is like an, this is an earthquake that is happening right now in the industry. And I will explain why. Other topics today, uh, in lighter news, uh, we're going to chat about the collab that I did with ElectroBoom today. Um, you know, I'm not going to spoil anything because I don't think there's anything to spoil today um you know i'm not going to spoil anything because i don't think there's anything to spoil what did you guys think was going to happen i get hurt by electricity he gets hurt by electricity it's going to be great uh what else we got luke

cyberpunk 2077 has various problems um i think that's one way of putting it it's like three different topics there but they're all it it's like three different topics there but they're all about it just like having problems so we'll talk about that also uh i'm gonna skip over the other topic actually and say the rx 6900 xt launched heck yeah all right nice nice and in perhaps the biggest news of the day speaking of of things that launched, lttstore.com. It's finally up. The Linus Tech Tips Northern Lights Desk Pad. It's finally here. Look at all these sizes, ladies and gentlemen. We made it in every size. And guess what? They're all the same price. That's right. You can get a 1.2 meter by 700 millimeter desk pad for $29.99 or you could get one that's a more

reasonable size if you're into that sort of thing. It looks great. All right let's go ahead and roll that intro. Holy crap you really do have every size ever don't you that was the goal also was it like strategically designed so that the right side is more blank uh yes yes it absolutely was believe it or not here i'm just this is how it too it too could be part of your super clean setup there you go so that's uh one of the i believe this is the 0.9 meters by 30 centimeters uh version so yes the this side over here is left blank intentionally because some mice tend to have tracking issues over high contrast uh barriers so we wanted to make sure that no matter what kind of mouse you have, it's going to track well, but we wanted it to have like a really nice graphical

design on it as well. Okay. Enough of that. Let's get into the big topic for today. Hardware unboxed, removed from the, okay. So here's what we have. I have spoken with Steve ahead of the show today, and I have gotten his permission to share, for the first time, is my understanding, the full email that he received from NVIDIA. Luke, can you do us the honors? Because I really don't know if I'm going to make it through this. Do you want me to do the email?

Yeah, can you read the email, please? Yes. Yep. All right. Hi, Steve. We have reached a critical juncture in the adoption of ray tracing, and it has gained industry-wide support

from top titles, developers, game engines, APIs, consoles, and GPUs. As you know, NVIDIA is all in for ray tracing. RT is important and core to the future of gaming, but it's also one part of our focused R&D efforts on revolutionizing video games and creating a better experience for gamers. This philosophy is also reflected in developing technologies such as DLSS, Reflex, and Broadcast that offer immense value to customers who are purchasing a GPU. They don't get free GPUs, they work hard for their money, and they keep their GPUs for multiple years. Despite all this progress, your GPU reviews and recommendations

have continued to focus singularly on rasterization performance, and you have largely discounted all of the other technologies we offer gamers. It is very clear from your community commentary that you do not see things the same way that we, gamers, and the rest of the industry do. Our Founders Edition boards and other NVIDIA products are being allocated to media outlets that recognize the changing landscape of gaming and the features that are important to gamers The changing landscape of gaming and the features that are important to gamers and anyone buying

a GPU today, be it for gaming, content creation, or studio and streaming. Hardware Unboxed should continue to work with our add-in card partners to secure GPUs to review. Of course, you will still have access to obtain pre-release drivers and press materials. That won't change. We are open to revisiting this in the future, should your editorial direction change. I don't know if you want me to sign it off, but go ahead. Brian Del Rizzo, Director of Global PR, GeForce. Brian Del Rizzo, director of global PR, GeForce.

Okay. For those of you who listened to that and went, well, yeah, NVIDIA doesn't have to send graphics cards to anyone they don't want to. That's a fair point. That is not the problem. There's lots of people that NVIDIA does not send graphics cards to for review for a wide variety of reasons. Whether they are not qualified to review graphics cards or whether they do not have a large enough audience to justify the expense of not just the graphics card.

That's actually not really the biggest part of the expense of engaging with media. The personnel that it takes to maintain that relationship. Like there's lots of costs associated. You cannot engage with every single publication. Sure, I get it. NVIDIA is not obligated to send graphics cards to anybody. not obligated to send graphics cards to anybody. The problem here is the argument that is being put forward because this is not Nvidia saying, you know, hey, sorry, we only have so many Founders

Edition cards to send out and you didn't make the cut because it's going to be only people with a million subscribers or more from now on. That's our new policy. Sorry, we would have loved to work with you. This is NVIDIA making a clear, clear line in the sand that says, you will not be receiving our products because you do not agree with NVIDIA's position about what is good about NVIDIA's products. And this is somewhere where I think it actually is almost even a little bit worse than that. Something that actually really drove me nuts. Well, I'm going to go through line by line here, Luke.

Okay, just based off what you just said. Give me one moment. Yeah, okay. All right, I'm real fired up right now, Luke. It is very clear from your community commentary that you do not see things the same way that we... Okay, fine. Good enough.

But then they also include that we, gamers, and the rest of the industry do. So they are trying to make them feel small and alone. That is some presumptuous right there for starters. Yes. And for number two, okay, that is not even the most strong arm mafia bull that's going on here.

Not even by a long shot. No. So we are going to start, we're going to start with the beginning here. Okay. We've reached a critical juncture in the adoption of ray tracing, and it has gained industry-wide support from top titles, developers, game engines, APIs, consoles, and GPUs.

Okay, you want a medal? Like, okay. I don't even dispute that. But that's not the topic of conversation today. As you know, NVIDIA is all in for ray tracing. Okay, it's important and core to the future of gaming. I don't dispute that. Don't have a problem yet.

It's also only one part of our focused R&D efforts on revolutionizing video games and creating a better experience for gamers. Uh, okay. This philosophy is reflected in developing technologies like deep learning, super sampling, reflex, and broadcasts that offer immense values to consumers who are purchasing a GPU. I'm sorry, is this a letter or a press release? Like, you're literally telling Hardware Unboxed what a GPU does.

Are you? What is this patronizing nonsense? Okay, now here's where it gets really bad. Okay, gamers, paraphrasing here, it says they. Okay, consumers, gamers, they don't get free GPUs. They work hard for their money and they keep their GPUs for multiple years. This says a few things to me. Number one is it says that reviewers get, quote unquote, free GPUs. Like it is benevolent NVIDIA that is bestowing upon you for which you should be grateful,

for which you owe them something for granting you this GPU. I have a newsflash for NVIDIA, okay? And I'm not the only one. In the time since I started the pre-stream, okay? The pre-stream for this show until now, based on one call out for our mouse pad, I have made enough to buy 10 RTX 3090s. I don't f***ing care.

I don't need your graphics card. And this is not about that. Number two, number two issue. Now to be clear, the mouse pad was a big launch for us. That's like not the ordinary, but there's more issues here. Number two is the way that this is worded. There is a transaction that's taking place here.

There's absolutely a transaction, but there are multiple transactions, okay? You are giving the media this card, but it's about more than the card. It's access to the drivers ahead of time. It's access to media briefing materials that allow us to cover it properly. And it is not for us. It is for your consumers. It is to educate your consumers, which if you make a good product is effectively marketing.

If you make something good and you educate consumers about it, you are effectively marketing the product. So in that way, reviewers are a marketing exercise for NVIDIA. But you have to understand that that's a transaction that takes place with the consumer who reads the review. With the reviewer, there's only one transaction. There's one transaction. The reviewer is given the tools to do their job properly and on time in a way to educate consumers. And you are given a fair and unbiased review. That is it.

That is all the value that your graphics card has to me. And I think I speak for Gam you know, Gamers Nexus, Hardware Unboxed, Anand Tech. I think I can speak for basically anyone who has any kind of reputation to uphold with their audience when I say that this is not about getting a graphics card. Okay. Let's move on. Also, they work hard for their money. Yeah, okay. Oh, no, we're not done yet here. And they keep their GPUs for multiple years.

So what you're basically saying here is that unless we're selling a feature based on its future utility, we're not doing a good job? No, that's your job. That's your job to convince the entire industry to adopt these features and to create value in the longer term. It is our job to evaluate it as it is today. So yeah, that's fine that they keep their GPUs for multiple years. Good for you. But we can only

evaluate what we can see. And the danger that I see here is when we covered RTX 20 series, we had exactly the same conclusion about real-time ray tracing with your RTX feature as hardware unbox and gamers Nexus, and basically anyone else who objectively evaluates this stuff. It came at a gigantic performance hit. We think that actually came later and there were absolutely no titles that supported the technology So what we said was don't buy based on this because there's no support right now And as we've seen time and time and time again The first generation of gpus to support basically f***ing anything

By the time it's actually supported industry-wide is not powerful enough to meaningfully utilize that feature anyway. And there is nothing wrong with that take. Nothing wrong with it at all. We can only market, because remember, this is marketing for you. But we, because of our relationship with the audience, can only market what we can actually measure. That's our job. Now, if you want to go and do a sponsored video with

Hardware Unboxed or with us for that matter, and you say, okay, look, here's the talking points we want to hit. Aside from just FTC guidelines, because of personal integrity, I think most people are not going to say anything that they can't actually agree with, that they don't actually believe, but you're welcome to have your marketing points built into content like that. But in the transaction that occurs, when you send out a review sample, a review sample, you don't get to dictate what the person says. And they don't have to factor in anything you say if they don't want to. And you cannot like that. But then let's move on about why this is more than just not liking it. Despite this progress, your GPU reviews and recommendations continue to focus singularly

on rasterization performance, and you have largely discounted all other technologies we offer to gamers. Okay. No offense to Steve from Hardware Unboxed. I don't watch your videos. I'm sorry. This entire fiasco going down is actually my first real dig into Hardware Unboxed because honestly, I have a limited amount of time. I'm sorry. I have not interacted with Steve from Hardware Unboxed ever until last night, except he reminded me. I actually met him at a trade show once. He's a really cool guy. Apparently, we exchanged hellos.

I'm sorry. I don't remember anything that happens at trade shows. I'm usually running on like four hours of sleep a night. I'm sorry. I can't. I can't. The point is, I don't like have a horse in this race. I'm not like a fan of Steve from Hardware Unboxed or anything like that.

But the email or what he tweeted initially, because I hadn't seen the whole email yet, looked so out of character, not just for NVIDIA, but for Brian Del Rizzo in particular, that I was like, what even is this? I have to know what's going on. So I immediately contacted Steve from Hardware Unboxed and I talked to him. I said, what is actually going on here? Because this doesn't pass the sniff test. This doesn't jive with anything that I know about NVIDIA in general or Brian in particular.

This smells personal. What's going on here? and he said he he sent me as as evidence of his position which is that he covers nvidia fairly according to his opinion about the technology which is an opinion not a fact but he sent me examples of how he has covered nvidia in a way that he thinks is fair he sent me their rtx 3080 review and he sent me their review uh He sent me some charts from their review of the 60, it was either the 6800 or 6900 XT. I want to get these details right, because this is very important. 6900 XT, he sent me charts from there. He sent me a video specifically focused on DLSS and RTX, actually, excuse me, 3080 launch. I watched the conclusion of the RTX 3080

video. I watched the entirety of the RTX ray tracing performance analysis video, and I had a look at the graphs from the 6900 XT video. I'm not going to overstate what I did. It was what I could look at in the time that I had in the bath and I will tell you what my impressions are. Okay. Number one, I thought that if anything, the review of the RTX 3080 glossed over RTX. Okay. I would say that we would have covered it in more depth than Steve did, but that's all i can say about that he made it clear that there was going to be a follow-up dedicated piece of content for rtx then true to his word he created that dedicated piece of content tim from his team hosted what i

thought was an excellent video based on numbers that Steve had run about RTX. It included commentary on performance. It included commentary on the generational improvement over the RTX 20 series. It included commentary on how it looked and all actually positive, even though that is not the point. It doesn't matter that NVIDIA is saying these things to someone who said negative things or positive things. It's the principle. So I don't want to get hung up on that. But it was largely positive and had an enormous amount of emphasis on DLSS, deep learning, super sampling, and went as far as to say, basically, any NVIDIA gamer should turn on DLSS immediately because the image quality is so close to running at native resolution.

That was said on the Hardware Unboxed YouTube channel. How can you possibly say that you have largely discounted all the other technologies we offer to gamers if they treat DLSS 2.0, which is a lot better than DLSS 1.0, which they rightly said was rubbish, if they treat DLSS 2.0 as a default, as an obvious thing to turn on for gamers. How can you say that? It just doesn't even make any sense. Like this smells emotional, not rational. And then get this, get this. If I was a team red fanboy, if I was that kind of degenerate and I was watching hardware and box review of the 6900 XT, okay, and I saw DLSS results on the same chart, on the same

bar graph as AMD's native full resolution rendering results, making NVIDIA look like they outperformed them by 30 freaking percent, even though it's like machine learning AI trickery, I'd be beside myself. I'd be screaming bloody murder. And yet that's what Hardware Unboxed did. They positioned DLSS deep learning super sampling results as being equivalent to AMD having to render at full resolution, and AMD obviously got absolutely annihilated in those tests because DLSS is great technology. That's not the debate here. The problem is that you continue to focus singularly on rasterization performance, and you have largely discounted all the other technologies we offer to gamers.

They didn't. This just sounds personal. It is, okay, we're continuing. Two more lines. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me just get this out. It is very clear from your community commentary that you do not see things the same way that we, gamers, and the rest of the industry do. How presumptuous of a thing to say is that, who the f*** are you? I know who Brian Del Rizzo is, and I know basically for a fact that he would never say those words in that order

to f***ing anyone. At least I hope I know. I have been trying to get in touch with him because I would really like to talk to him about this email. And I'm not, I'm not like, look, just because he hasn't gotten back to me, I'm not drawing any conclusions based on that.

He's got a life, okay? He's got a life and I can't, I'm not entitled to an immediate 30 second response anytime I'm upset about something. That's not how this works. So I'm going to give him time, but I need to talk to Brian about this because that, that is not,

A, that's not anyone's position to say. If I said that, if I said those words, if I said to you, Luke, it's clear from community commentary that from your community commentary and like your twitch stream chat or whatever it doesn't matter that you do not see things the same way that i gamers and the rest of the industry does it doesn't matter who says that that is a ridiculous thing to say really immediately think you were wrong,

but I would immediately think that you were extremely presumptuous to at the very least include yourself in the other categories. Another thing that's very weird here is that I think you and I both in the past have, I wouldn't necessarily say defended, but made sure we were a little bit more careful when dealing with things from Mr. BDR because having dealt with him like directly in person a decent amount, he's generally very reasonable.

Yep. Like very, very reasonable and very easy to work with. And that has been, seeing his name at the bottom of this email was singularly the most surprising thing about this entire process to me personally. Okay, let's go on. Our founders edition boards and other NVIDIA products are being allocated to media outlets that recognize the changing landscape of gaming and the features that are important to gamers and anyone buying a GPU today, be it for gaming, content creation,

or studio and streaming, that recognize the changing landscape. So this is just mafia speak for it would sure be a shame if anything happened to your nice little media outlet here, because we would hate for our Founders Edition boards to stop making their way into your hands. Except this is the point in the Don's communication to you where you're already having your knees broken. Now, this next bit. This next bit is a big load of bulls**t in a way that I think most of you would not properly understand without the context that I'm going to give to you because it sounds pretty conciliatory. It sounds like an olive branch, but it's actually the complete opposite. Hardware Unboxed should continue to

work with our add-in card partners to secure GPUs to review. Of course, you will still have access to obtain pre-release drivers and press materials. That won't change. No, that is actually not how that works. Let's talk about this. Let's do the last line first. We are open to revisiting this in the future should your editorial direction change.'s just like go yourself um okay so back to they should continue to work with our ad and board partners and why this is such nonsense yeah this is the first basically we've seen this we've seen this from nvidia over a long period of time nvidia has exerted more and more control over their own narrative in the time that I've been in this industry. So if this is the first bullet, if this is the actual first execution that they have performed, we've been watching them suit up and fill their magazines and put

on the trench coat and be in the white room with all the guns and fill bags with them. We're talking Matrix references at this point. We've been watching this take place over the trench coat and be in the white room with all the guns and fill bags with them you know we're talking matrix references at this point we've been watching this take place over the last five years this is not it's this is not necessarily a surprise but this is by far the most brazen step they've taken in this direction and the danger is that this is the first domino in what is potentially a catastrophic chain reaction. NVIDIA is not just not sending free shit to someone, okay? What they have done here effectively is because they have exerted an increasingly high level of control over board partner sampling,

what they are effectively, just in a roundabout way, doing is cutting off Hardware Unbox's ability to do launch day reviews without having to just say that outright. We saw this. We saw this. I forget if it was 3080 or 3090, but there was a two-day-later embargo for partner cards two days later. So effectively, Hardware Unbox would not be able to cover a GeForce card at launch. Now, why would NVIDIA be after that unless they had something to fear from hardware unboxed covering their product at launch? Unless they felt like hardware unboxed was somehow a threat to their ability to sell their product. Luke, what is that face you're making? What's going on

over there? You have to see this um floatplane chat was spamming this i'm assuming to me because they know that i read floatplane chat during the show um you guys can stop spamming it now but holy cow like what the heck what is this that's gotta be screen shared and you gotta see it okay uh we get to that. We will get to that in a moment. Guys, thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'm not quite done with this thought. Give me a second here. Okay, so this is about more than just money.

This is about NVIDIA exerting control. This is about NVIDIA exerting control over what is said about their products without them saying it. Because you got to understand, at launch day, what the curve looks like when you release a video or an article is like this. Huge and then exponential decrease in who is looking for information about this card. You are doing way more than just telling Hardware Unboxed, look, we don't think it's worth the $600 or whatever the actual bare board cost of this thing is to support you. Because you're hurting Hardware

Unboxed in a lot of ways. Hardware Unboxed is positioned as a source for quick content. So yeah, you're affecting their money because they're not going to get as many views. So sure. But you're also affecting their brand. A big part of the trust that a media outlet has with their audience is being a timely, accurate source of content. You are either hurting their timeliness, you're hurting their accuracy if they rush, or you are hurting them personally. You are hurting their life because if you don't give Steve the same amount of time, Hardware Unboxed Steve, not Gamers Next to Steve. If you don't give Steve from Hardware Unboxed

the same amount of time to cover the product as his competitors in the industry, he either has to sacrifice money by just publishing later, accuracy of the content by rushing, or his sleep, his actual life, spending time with the, I don't even know, I don't know the guy. Maybe he has kids. I don't know. It doesn't matter to me. The point is he might not get to actually play the video games that he's making videos about. He might not get

to see his family or children or whatever it is. You are actually affecting his life in that way. And I'm not saying you have to send him a card. I'm saying that what you're doing is the reasoning for it. And what you're doing is a lot bigger than what that last paragraph makes it seem like. And there are bigger problems here too. This sends a message to other media like me. You better get on board with ray tracing or else. I heard that loud and clear. It was a dog whistle, but I'm not an idiot. I understood it absolutely. You better make sure you get on board with NVIDIA's vision for the direction of the gaming industry or else. We are

going to affect either your money or the quality of your content or your life. We're going to affect either your money or the quality of your content or your life. We're going to affect that. Now, arguably, this was a private email. But if you're going to, with a straight face, tell me that you didn't expect this to leak immediately, either you're stupid or you think I am. Because this is hardware unboxed. You'd have to be a complete idiot. No offense. I'm using very strong language here because it's appropriate. You'd have to be a complete idiot. No offense.

I'm using very strong language here because it's appropriate. You'd have to be a complete f***ing idiot to think that this will not get immediately published. So you're sending a message to consumers. You're sending a message to hardware unboxed. You're sending a message to other media. Don't kid yourself. Furthermore, what you're also doing is you're driving more of a divide between the toxic fan bases that exist on both sides. Team Red and Team Green, quite honestly,

I've made my position on this clear. If you're a fanboy, if you don't look at things objectively, if you don't even try, you're a f***ing idiot. That's all there is to it. Being a fanboy of any corporation, be it Apple, Google, NVIDIA, AMD, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Okay? Stop. Just stop. So what NVIDIA is doing is they're driving even more of a wedge here. How am I supposed to continue to cover real-time ray tracing? How am I supposed to cover RTX? It happens to be a feature that I like and I think is really cool and I do happen to believe is the future of lighting and gaming

as GPUs continue to get more and more powerful. I happen to actually think that. But now what you're going to do is you're going, you are effectively branding, you're effectively branding hardware unboxed as like, you know, a team red media outlet because they're not fair to me.

This media doesn't cover me fairly. Who do you sound like? You got to decide who you want to sound like. Because you're branding them as red media and then what you're doing effectively, because if you actually have any idea what your job is, if you're in public relations, if you actually have no anything about public relations, is you are engaging with the public to create this divide. So you're going to create a divide where hardware unboxed is now red media, and it's going to get attacked for that. And you're creating a divide where all of a sudden,

just because I happen to think RTX is good, I'm now green media and I'm going to get called an NVIDIA shill just because I happen to agree with you because you sent out a dog whistle that said you agree with us about the direction of the industry or else. That's what you did. You either respect a free and independent media or you don't. You don't get to selectively respect it. So if you acknowledge that this is a difference of opinion and not objective fact, if you don't have a smoking gun that says, hardware unboxed is on the take from AMD,

and that's why they don't cover us fairly. If you have nothing, if you acknowledge, what a stupid email to send. Like if I was going to be evil, I'd be smarter about it. If you acknowledge that there is no reason for this other than a difference of opinion and that, well, we could fix that for you if you would just start towing the company line. If you acknowledge that, then you have stepped over the line. You can't respect independent media and differences of opinion from one media outlet

and not from another media outlet. There is absolutely no gray area. Once you have crossed that line with one of us, you've crossed it with all of us and you've crossed it with your consumers. This email is a disaster. It's an absolute disaster. And do you want to know why? Because it reads like every

pathetic, toxic, fanboy, wet dream of how bad and evil NVIDIA is. And up until now, up until now, I have defended NVIDIA at every turn. I have said, I even said last night in my first response to this tweet, I said, that really doesn't sound like the NVIDIA that I know. I have defended you guys. And time and time again, the allegations haven't been true. But this time, it's right from your own hand. You went and said, okay, well, there's this perception of us as, you know, like the big bad green monster. So I'm gonna go ahead. I'm a, I'm a grow a little goatee and little mustache. Like I'm gonna grow a little Hitler mustache or something.

I'm gonna put on a, put on a monocle. I'm a ride around in a Zeppelin and I'm going to play the part. You just made every team red AMD fanboy's dream come true. Because now when they come after me or anyone who says a bloody positive thing about you, they're going to have real, actual f***ing ammunition. Way to f***ing go. Intermission time for the picture? For the what? For what I sent you on discord yeah sure because i think that's still important to get through when you're still pissed off because

this is actually kind of fine incredibly insulting give me a second yeah the best part of all of this this just quite possibly the stupidest part of all of this. So here's a link from Web Archive. For all I know, it's still live though. Let's go ahead and screen share with me. Let's screen share with me. And it's not about this. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if hardware unboxed,

like covered it positively or negatively. The problem is the precedent. But let's head over to Wayback Machine. By the way, Wayback Machine is awesome. And if you guys do feel like supporting them, you should totally do that because the work that they do is incredibly important for things like this. Here we go. So here's media impressions of NVIDIA DLSS, one of the technologies that NVIDIA has gone and invested a lot in. The real deal, Forbes. Technologies that NVIDIA has gone and invested a lot in.

The real deal, Forbes. What else we got here? Come on, Carousel. Show me what you got. Extremely impressive hardware unboxed. Literally the first f***ing bullet point in your marketing on your DLSS page. But yeah, they definitely aren't aligned are uh not following the rest of the industry and gamers and everyone else that follows nvidia definitely not at all but we're gonna use them for marketing on our website thanks yeah yeah but but we didn't get anything out of this transaction

where we send them a graphics card oh no no there's no possible benefit you're just doing it out of greed because you want free graphics cards or something worth this entire freaking and you don't respect you know the real gamers who really spend money on graphics cards no i don't know if you respect the real gamers who spend real money on graphics cards because that's the entire point of what we do making sure they spend their real money on graphics cards, because that's the entire point of what we do, making sure they spend their real money on graphics cards that are the best choice for them. And maybe, maybe Steve's opinion is that rasterization is more important today and he doesn't foresee RTX 30 series with the current roadmap of games that are coming out, more attractive for its RTX features. Maybe he doesn't.

That's his prerogative. And if the gamers who follow him want to hear that perspective, because that's what's important to them in the games that they play, and they want to know how these products stack up with that perspective, there is nothing wrong with that. They're gamers too. Okay, I don't know if i want to talk about this anymore i think i've said everything that i have to say there are some actual notes from

alex in the doc but i didn't really look at any of it um yeah that's all i have to say about that are you potentially interested in taking a bit of a go Go buy a mouse pad, lttstore.com. It's finally listed, the Northern Lights mouse pad. And you know what? While you're at it, I don't know what kind of merch Hardware Unboxed has, but go buy some of that. Go buy a Gamers Nexus mod mat.

Go buy... What kind of crap does Kyle have? Oh, he has a mouse pad. Don't buy his mouse pad. Buy other stuff from him. Buy my mouse pad. Whatever, buy his mouse pad. Buy other stuff from him. Buy my mouse pad. Whatever. Buy his mouse pad, too.

I don't even care. The point is serving, but you can subscribe to Kyle and hardware unboxed on float. Absolutely. You can. You can subscribe to Linus Tech Tips on float plane to support media because that is the only way that NVIDIA tactics like this can have absolutely no impact other than to piss me off. That's it.

And I pretty much guarantee you everyone else I just named is not going to cover NVIDIA products any differently than they already did because reality check NVIDIA, it's really nice to work with you and we appreciate it. And actually, I have loved working with you guys over the years. But if this is how it's going to be, if the only way to cover you guys properly is going to be to play your little game

and cover it the way that you say, f*** you. That's all there is to it. I can live without you. Truly can. Now I'm done. For real. Okay.

I want to talk about... Want to talk about something more fun? Yeah. This? Yes, I do. I want to talk about the collab today with ElectroBoom. You know ElectroBoom, right, Luke? Absolutely.

I've watched that guy on YouTube forever. His content's fantastic. Love the message, love the content. It's always been really good. Mehdi is freaking amazing. So we had the idea of doing a video. It's sponsored by Seasonic. So we kind of like to keep videos sort of on topic.

I mean, Seasonic is super chill. They literally buy a sponsor spot once a year just to like say happy holidays to our audience. Literally no talking points. I'm not supposed to talk about the product at all. They're just like, yeah, yeah, whatever. It's chill. Just, just like be like, you know, Merry Christmas or whatever. I'm like, okay, sure. Uh, thanks. See Sonic. Uh, so they're super chill, but on our side, we try to make it kind of make sense. And so because Seasonic makes power supplies, we're like, oh, why don't we try and do like a power, like, oh, why don't we do something around like electrostatic discharge?

Because you see it time and time again in the YouTube comments. It's like, you know, oh, Linus isn't wearing an ESD strap or, you know, make sure you're wearing an ESD strap or this, or like your stuff's going to die. And that's true. But then we also see comments that are like, I've been building computers without ESD straps for 10 years and it's never mattered. So we wanted to do a video that was like, okay, does ESD actually kill your hardware?

And the answer is obviously yes. Or, you know, Intel could save a lot of money on like, you know, the building of their, the construction of their facilities if they didn't have to worry about it at all, right? And the improved resiliency of their motherboards, because there's been a lot of on that over the years. I'm sure Asus would be more than happy to not bother to put any, you know, ESD protections on their motherboards, right?

So it does. But what we wanted to know was well like what are the odds right and i was we're in the writers meeting and i'm like man i wish there wasn't a global pandemic right now because you know who i'd love to collab with on this is electro boom and uh one of the guys i think it was Colin, was like, you know he lives in Burnaby, right? And I was like, what? Wait, what? Are you kidding me? It's really weird. I don't know where else he would be, but it's always weird to figure out that someone's hyper-local. Yeah.

You always think it's the only group of people in town that are doing this kind of stuff. And it's like, oh Oh no, not at all. If I really wanted to, I could walk to his house. Like it would take me a while, but like I could. And so, so cause,

cause part of his shtick is that he gives just a, he's a wealth of information about electrical engineering and electronics. And he, he has this amazing, just utterly unique educational style where he shows you what to do or explains what to do by demonstrating so often what not to do. And the more you watch the content, the more fun it is to watch because the more anticipation you have for how he's about to physically harm himself. And can I just say that I have had the pleasure of meeting a ton of absolutely wonderful individuals in the YouTube community. You know, to name just a few of them, okay? Nico from Corridor Digital,

Nico from Corridor Digital, Justine from iJustine, Marquez, Lou from Unbox Therapy, Dave, Dave2D, Austin Evans, Jay, Steve from Gamers Nexus. This is an amazing community, both YouTube and tech, and tech YouTube, whatever. Almost everyone I've met is just freaking awesome and like cool and genuine and real. Like not fake. I hate fake people. I can't stand it. Drives me up the wall. But just real people who just happen to get into YouTube and like, yeah, I guess they're famous now or whatever.

But they're still chill. They're still just real people. And I have never been disappointed to meet any of them. It's never like, oh, wow, you were way cooler in the videos. Like, wow, you're kind of a d*** or whatever. I've never felt like that. People's on-screen personas have basically led me to believe what ended up being true about who they are. to believe what ended up being true about who they are. But I have never met anyone who in person was exactly as funny and genuine and cool as Mehdi. Okay. He was flipping awesome. And I just,

I really enjoyed working with him today. It was an absolute pleasure. And the video is going to be awesome. He's going to have a video on his channel. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. That's all I have to say about that. I don't want to spoil it. But if you know anything about ElectroBoom, then you'll probably already know that there's going to be a lot of me getting shocked with electricity. And there's going to be a lot of him getting shocked and there's going to be a lot of us shocking each other and there's definitely going to be dead hardware because the subject of the video is can ESD kill your components and we all already know that the answer is yes very cool that's exciting it's going to be. Now we've got a topic that's really more you than me

and I need to shut up for a little bit here and just chill out a little bit. Yeah, I want you to, oh, sponsor break. Yeah, I mean, I guess we could do that. Sure, yeah, yeah, let's get the sponsors talked about here. Backblaze. Backblaze is unlimited cloud backup for Macs and PCs for just $6 a month.

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structures, just unlimited data at a fixed price. Get a free 15-day trial at backblaze.com slash WAN. The show is also brought to you by Honey. Honey is the free shipping tool that finds the best promo codes whenever you shop online at specific sites like Amazon, eBay, Newegg, Razor, Best Buy, Walmart, and more. Those of you who have downloaded Honey from our link have saved over 100 Gs US in the last few months. And the way Honey works is it's free because they get a commission from the sites where you're shopping. It also installs in just two clicks. So there's no reason not to add it as an extension to your browser. It even has other great features like price history, checking, and stuff like that.

So get it now at joinhoney.com slash Linus. The show is also brought to you by Squarespace. It's Squarespace. You want to build a beautiful website and don't spend a bunch of extra time that you don't have because you're a busy lad or lass? Use Squarespace.

They've got tons of templates spanning a large variety of categories and styles. So whether you need a website for your blog, your wedding, your business, Squarespace has got you covered. You can buy a domain through Squarespace if you need one, or you can port over an existing one you already own, and you don't have to take my word for it. Try out Squarespace for free for 14 days at squarespace.com slash when and make sure you use this link by the way because it'll give you 10 off your first purchase all right uh okay i lied i have one more thing to say because uh hardware unbox just messaged me so i just want to have a quick look at what's going on here hi guys um actually oh wow not the only one uh not the only one who's messaging me here so i

heard from hardwareware Unboxed say, great job on WAN. You really did an amazing job. You sound like you're surprised. You know, I do actually do this for a living. He might not watch your content. I don't think he does. And I actually heard from one of my favorites, one of my longtime favorites, Dr. Cutress taught me so much of what I know about computers. You know, him, Ryan Smith, Anand Lalshimpe, Ryan Shrout. There's someone really important that I'm forgetting from the old Anand Tech, Gary Key. Those guys basically brought me into the fold. They brought me into computer technology.

And I was, wow, I'm honored to get a message like this from Dr. Cuttriss. Just says, big kudos for the NVIDIA passion, voiced a lot of concerns so very well. And then this is sort of editorial plans that he has. So I'm not going to talk about that. That's his private information. But thank you, Dr. Cuttriss. Good to hear from you, Ian. Man, I miss you. We haven't chilled in forever because of this COVID. So next time we Ian. Man, I miss you. We haven't chilled in forever because of this COVID shit. So next time we get a chance, I'm hopping on the next plane

to the next trade show that actually exists and I will see you there. All right. So yeah, thanks guys. I, you know, I'm not doing this for kudos though. I'm doing this because it's legitimately actually important. And oh man, I didn't even talk about

how NVIDIA doing this empowers other manufacturers to take these strong arm approach to things. Like if NVIDIA starts doing this, who's gonna say that, you know, Intel isn't gonna look over and say, oh wow, well, this is a really good idea. We don't have to see products to anyone

that doesn't say how amazing our, you know, AVX 512 extension is. Well, what a wonderful idea. Okay, okay, okay. Talk about Cyberpunk, please. I need to stop thinking about this now. Okay, so Cyberpunk has problems on old consoles, on old hardware, et cetera.

On PC, if you have the might, it can look really fantastic um night city looks looks beautiful some of the models are absolutely fantastic but on mortal hardware as it's described in the doc and i like that more common hardware it can chug pretty hard for instance um gtx 1080 that's the same thing i ran it. It's the same thing as the person who wrote this ran it on. It can chug pretty hard if you try to put it at a very nice setting. It sounds like the person in the dock ran with mostly medium settings. That's the same thing I did. And they noticed it regularly dipping below 60. So did I. Sounds like we had a very similar experience. They say they haven't had very many bad bugs yet, but they're only about about four hours in i'm in less time than that and have experienced some bugs but i was also kind of poking for them so i don't know how fair that is nerd nerd a little bit um on the ps4 however

it runs between it runs between 720p and 900p with a frame rate of around 15 to 20 FPS in the city, getting closer to 30 FPS inside or indoors. Yeah, that's pretty rough. 15 is like not, it's not a good experience. No, not even freaking remotely. There's also lots of examples that you guys have probably seen around the internet of things that like,

if you've seen Cyberpunk on a good setup, just don't even actually look, I'll read that later. Don't even actually look like Cyberpunk. There's also some really, really bad interactions. Like I saw one clip where someone walked up to a person in the game and their the the detail level of their clothing just rapidly changed in front of them without ever actually sticking on one thing right um probably due to

performance issues of other models in the scene and trying to decide what render distance it wanted to do and stuff and if it's a busy street there could be models popping in and out constantly and they just wouldn't know what to do yeah uh so like graphically there's lots of issues digital foundry has done uh fantastic analysis on the game as they generally do with these types of things uh there's a quote from them that says uh for a particular car chase in the game on ps4 it just cannot run it's not that it's running under 20 fps but it stutters as well as streams in the world there's slowdown they're stuttering and the visual quality is seriously compromised i mean the whole thing is just kind of a mess that's not that's not what you want Digital Foundry to be saying about your game.

So yeah, it has major performance issues, which I think on PC is a little bit more excusable. We're just used to that. Yeah. And sometimes the argument of like, oh, you have to go get new hardware to play new fancy game is kind of embraced by the PC community. But there's a bigger problem for

console players because this is a really good argument for why licenses for games should be platform agnostic because if i'm someone who bought this game for ps4 and i don't manage to get it refunded within my refund window whatever that is in sony's shop and i know i want to play it like properly at some point i now have to buy another copy of the game. Like what? And whereas on PC, we actually do buy games that we know are pushing the limits of our hardware, knowing that we're going to play it through

once for the story. We're going to save our pennies. We're going to upgrade our graphics card six months down the line. And then we're going to crank the eye candy and we're going to play it again and have like a whole new experience. That's like, that's part of pc gaming yeah and there's arguments

there too for like replayability of the game and whatnot but like it is kind of uh it's aggravating to be able to buy something for something specific like i can buy this game specifically for a ps4 i'm gonna buy the hard copy because i'm i'm weird and it's gonna say ps4 on the box because it's made for that console and then it is basically unplayable i would argue that ranging from 720p to 900p and 15 to 20 fps is unplayable yep i think some people might disagree with me but i'm not very concerned about that minority um it can cause nausea for people like very low frame rates especially if you're playing on a tv like on a large tv can actually cause physical problems for people this is about more than just pc mr elitism you 15 fps like it's

that affects your ability to play competitively for realsies. And OK, it's not a multiplayer game, but that doesn't mean that you don't want to compete with, you know, your own knowledge of your own skills. Like you don't want to be underperforming compared to how you think you should be able to play a game like I only played it briefly. And I went through a car chase chase scene where you're supposed to like, actually, it might be the same one Digital Foundry is talking about. I didn't watch the video, but you're supposed to like actually it might be the same one digital foundries talking about I didn't watch the video but you're supposed to shoot

opponents that are in like another car that's in front of you and like moving around and stuff there is no way that I could have done it at 15 fps it was hard enough with it with it chugging on um the the settings I was playing on with the 1080 there there has been some comments in the chat and I think we might have said some confusing things, very much myself included. This has an upgrade to PS5. What Linus was talking about was a general thing where all games should be platform agnostic.

Yes. He wasn't necessarily talking about only this one in this one case. That's right. He's talking like everything should be platform agnostic. Correct. So, yeah, I just wanted to make sure we had that clarification fully out there. Sorry, sorry for the, sorry for the confusion. Every game should, there you go. There should be no reason why you are ever, ever stuck with a copy of a game for a console that doesn't run it properly and then not be able to experience it properly with

the same license of the game that you've already purchased thanks for jumping in with that guys yep go ahead luke yep um moving basically performance bad performance real real bad uh moving on cyberpunk is causing seizures a sequence in the game features uh blinking red and white leds similar to the ones used by doctors to induce seizures for diagnosis purposes. Initially, the game only included a seizure warning in the game's EULA, which no one reads. Now we're working on adding a separate warning in the game. I did notice when I launched my game,

there was a thing that says seizure warning. But still, like... It's not the best look um and also like there's even aside from the white and red flashing um like the way that even the website for the game like kind of glitches like i thought my display was actually broken or like i had a bad hdmi connection or something like that i understand that's an aesthetic you guys are going after i if there's anything we've learned from having things like a dead pixel on one of our cameras um it's that it's not really conducive to the user's enjoyment to have them think that their equipment is defective okay when people are watching an ltt video and it makes them think they have a dead pixel on their monitor. They're not really, they're not focused on enjoying the video

in much the same way that like, if you're half the time, you think that your TV's broken, you're not gonna, and I'm not saying half, if anyone's that stupid, I'm just saying as an aesthetic or artistic choice, I don't know, maybe reconsider next time.

That's all, that's all. I'm not saying it's the end of the world. And last but not least, and this isn't a note in the doc, but it's the user score. All right. All right. Luke, talk about how you really feel. Talk about how you really

feel, Luke. There was already articles going out about why a 90 was a failure. Cyberpunk got a 90 on Metacritic and it was interpreted as very bad. And some people were like,

how is it? Like if I got 90 on a test, I'd be super stoked. So how is this bad? Well, there's a lot to do with that. I'm not even going to go into that now. What is more in the realm of failure and to be honest,

as I've looked at this throughout the day, it has constantly increased. So maybe it's not really going to be honest as i've looked at this throughout the day it has constantly increased so maybe um it's not really going to be as much of a thing but the user score this morning was below six it is now currently 6.1 there are some things in the game that may have led to certain people just review bombing it yes i don't think that's entirely the reason why it has this score. I've read through a decent amount of the reviews, and a lot of them felt kind of the same way about it that I did. It's very railed at the beginning.

Night City is very pretty pretty but feels very dead there's basic there's a there's a lot of lacking of ai um like like to get away there's someone was talking in one of the reviews that like if you if you need to get away from the police the way you do it is by driving in a straight line because they like pop out yeah i was able to get away from the police in my uh in my just visual impressions video i was able to get away from the police by starting a like a story uh dialogue so i just like ran over to someone that i was supposed to talk to to uh to to continue the story and the police behind me just like stopped being interested in me immediately i was no longer a wanted criminal i mean that's like that's like gta1 stuff yeah you can't continue until you drop your wanted level

like that's that's some like super basic stuff like it's it feels despite how much time despite how many articles came out about the crunch that went on it despite all this stuff by the fact they worked on it for eight years. It feels kind of unfinished. Also, I'm like, I don't know. I played for a while, not like a super long time, but I have only seen things so far that were either in trailers or like in short gameplay snippets that they have uploaded.

I'm sure there's a lot more to the game, but it lacks a sense of of impact i have a hard time so far really caring about a lot of the characters including my own character um it it lacks a sense of impact when you do things in the game things feel very hollow an example that i would give for that is um is like in in god of war when you, the newer-ish God of War, when you throw the axe and catch it again, there was like articles about how amazing that feeling was

because it had fantastic feedback. It had a fantastic impact. And like almost nothing in Cyberpunk feels like it properly has that amount of impact, which breaks immersion. It's this beautiful game game but it feels like a picture instead of a game now i don't know i'm not far enough in to make an actual review at all to disclaim it this is not a review and luke still are you planning to play it more or are you just

like kind of not that into it super motivated to play it right away but i feel like it's too monumental of a thing for me to not go back to eventually i to play it right away but i feel like it's too monumental of a thing for me to not go back to eventually i just don't know exactly what i will right all right that's fair that's fair we've got a leak i hope people like it i hope it improves i would like to like the game um it just in its current state i'm not there, but I really, I would like to. So hopefully something happens. All right, let's do the 32-core Apple Silicon Mac Pro leak. So this is according to Mark Gurman via Bloomberg. This is a rumor. Apple is expecting to produce Apple Silicon processors

that are faster than even the current best-performing Intel PCs, like period. Like not just within a given power envelope. The company said it expects to finish the transition away from Intel into its own silicon in 2022. The unnamed sources say at present, the plan for 2021 is a new MacBook Pro and both an entry-level and high-end iMac.

So I'd be expecting something competitive with like, you know, a Core i9-10900K, like that kind of class of product. For graphics, Apple is testing 16 and 32 core parts, and given how well their onboard graphics have performed so far in only 7 and 8 core configurations, I am very interested to see how these do. And the highest-end Mac Pro would be expected to come sometime in 2022 and could gain 64 or 128-core graphics processing to go along with the 32-core from the 32 high-performance Apple Silicon CPUs built into the SoC. The first M1 machine in 2021 could be a 24-inch iMac, possibly in March. So this is all leaks and rumors, but is interesting nonetheless.

Apple is clearly aware that in order to compete at the very high end, they needed a lot more cores and it looks like they're planning to like go there. Very much delivered, yeah. Yeah, very exciting. All right, I don't really want to talk about the 6900 XT launch. It's like, yep, if you want to know about that,

you can go watch our review. Clearly nobody cared because it didn't perform very well. I mean, our video, our video, the graphics card's very fast. It's just, it's just not, it's just like not that interesting. It's a faster 6800 XT, just like the, well, no, not just like the 3090 was a faster 3080 because the 3090 added a bunch more memory and stuff which actually does make a difference at very high resolutions uh but the 6800 xt already had 16 gigs of ram so it's like oh okay so it's it's faster uh it's faster it's better say to my 2.1 um one random note from nick um he thinks that you guys may have underestimated

the number of people that would buy the biggest boy. Oh, for the desk pad? The 100 by 700. It is currently the top seller, and one third of them are gone. Okay. So a couple things here, guys. Please buy the smaller ones.

And number two, if you want one of the bigger ones, make sure you move LeFast because they are, they're going. They're going, all right. All right, still got a few more things I want to talk about here. All right, AirPods Max. Apple shared details about their professional set

of over-ear headphones. They feature audio sharing. So you can easily share an audio stream between two sets of AirPods. Although that, if I recall correctly, was already a thing equipped with the H1 chip in each ear cup. So they use computational audio to deliver the highest quality listening experience possible. Okay. I guess, well, that remains to be seen.

I mean, highest quality listening experience possible. This is where Apple runs into trouble. Why don't you just say it's really good? Like this is where I end up, you know, you force my hand in this Apple, okay? Because this is where I end up making a video saying Apple's up to their nonsense again, making marketing claims that can't possibly be true. And then Apple fanboys come after me and they say,

Linus is always just down on Apple. And it's like, no, no. What I said was the marketing is bad. I'm not saying the product is bad. I'm just saying I sincerely doubt that it is the highest quality listening experience possible. That's all I'm saying is that it probably isn't that. Okay. Yeah. Highest quality. That is a direct quote from their website. I sincerely doubt it.

Okay. High fidelity audio, active eq active noise cancellation spatial audio transparency mode all that sounds good like to be clear i i i love my airpods pros and the airpods are good too i think they're good products i think it's a good product line i have high hopes for this just don't say stuff that's just obviously not true like the highest quality listening experience possible. Just say it's a pair of over the ear headphones. It's pretty good. Maybe even, maybe even good. Just say that.

Like, ah, five colors, including space gray, silver. Sorry, you went robot there for a sec. Hit me again. You should try to get your hands on some Orpheums and then compare the two. Yeah, exactly, right? But then I get accused of being like an Apple hater. Like, yeah, you had to spend $20,000 in order to beat it. Right, but Apple positioned themselves against it.

They said theirs was the highest quality listening experience possible, which is just like obviously not true. So then I'm made out to be the bad guy uh okay space gray silver sky blue green and pink they're 549 which honestly i thought a lot of people were like outraged about the price and i'm looking at it going like have you ever shopped for headphones especially if these are the highest quality listening experience possible. Like if these go... Experience possible? That is a amazing bargain.

That's a smoking deal. Oh my goodness. Ladies and gentlemen, do I have something to sell you? According to Mark Gurman again, Apple reportedly ditched some features in order to release them in 2020. Touch controls?

Nope. Digital crown like the Apple Watch provides volume control. Wait, are these missing features? I don't even know. I'll look at this later. No customizable headbands. All right. Missing the U1 chip, so no wireless handoffs. Okay, sure. And all right, last thing. This is from Consumer Reports. HP's free ink for life plan is over because some scams are illegal.

Just three years ago, HP launched its instant ink print subscription program where HP would send more ink when levels run low. The free tier allowed users to print up to 15 pages per month without having to worry about paying to refill their ink or even going to the store to get it. This, what? Where HP would send more ink? This has been extremely popular over the last year with the global pandemic, and HP considers the program a global success. How the free tier works. HP monitors the number of pages printed.

A dollar gets you 10 more pages. After every five pages, HP prints out an ad, which supposedly doesn't count towards ink and print usage. What even is this? The paid tiers, unsurprisingly, allow... Why would they, like, wasting paper like that? Really? Allow you to print more per month and you don't have to put up with a printer that prints ads. Okay, and the late-stage capitalism here is about to get worse. That free plan now costs a dollar a month to run a printer that you already own and potentially bought on the premise of using the free ink program.

Got it. There's some good news, though. Laser printers are now getting toner subscriptions. Subscriptions purchased with new printers get six months free and unused pages roll over for up to three months instead of two. If you cancel your subscription, which many are threatening to do with the new price, the instant ink cartridge in the printer will cease to function altogether, because of course it will. HP, go f*** yourself. Thank you. That is all. Nice. In other news, the LTT Store Desk Pad, okay, you're going to buy it for $29.99, and then if you expect to keep moving your mouse across it, suddenly I am going to spring on you a program where every kilometer that you move your

mouse along the mouse pad is going to cost you ten dollars and 69 cents thank you very much uh you can go buy your ltt store desk pads now your first two kilometers are free as long as you use all of them within the first three months like what even is going on right now luke what is happening you could legitimately put a thing in like you could say that you get free uh you get free free wireless charging built into your desk pad all you got to do is buy the wireless charging accessory and buy a subscription for wireless charging like what is going on more than uh 22 hours a day uh without turning off your mouse manually then there's a one dollar charge per day um but it's free if you wait for two years when you buy the device

and then you pull that back and make it so that ah if you charge your device at all it's a dollar a day and that futurama quote feels super, super appropriate right now. Well, two of them actually. Shut up and take my money, number one. And number two, I don't want to live on this planet anymore. It's just, I just can't. All right. Why don't we get into our super chats here?

Because I'm sure you guys have sent me some interesting stuff. Ilya, Linus, is your watch still working after today's shocking experiments yes my what i guess so i mean i don't actually use it but yes it seems to be working what else we got you should have like a a new segment that's like scam watch scam watch oh scam watch like okay i get it i mean i'd like to think it doesn't happen often enough that I need a segment for it. But Tiscorp asks, will the new LTT underwear SKUs use the same Ziploc bags? I believe we are planning to use very similar bags,

but I don't know that they will be identical ones because we moved away from our previous supplier over concerns about their treatment of workers. Tommygun1928, guys, do you cover that BS from Apple only for the algorithm are you actually interested in this garbage you are not Apple sales personnel like and then they named a person

that I'm not going to name because that's not true we cover Apple products because we are a tech channel and whether you want or buy Apple products at all what Apple does has huge implications for the rest of the industry I mean Apple has a long history

of dealing only with favorable media. So you think it's like some kind of innovation that NVIDIA has come up with here? Like, no, that's why it upsets me when Apple does things. And that's why I'm happy when Apple does good things, because it tends to put pressure on other manufacturers to do good things and it tends to take the pressure off of them to not do bad things so apple is extremely important whether you think they're overpriced or good or bad they're important dorbean says what the hell is a toque it's a toque it's this you might call it a beanie um all right um oof uh ritz blitz says a lot going on in the world go hug your loved ones just had to say goodbye to my dad in hospice over

video with someone holding the phone because we can't go see him lots of memories playing mist i'm sorry to hear that that's that's rough and that's good advice i think i'll do just that as soon as i'm done with the show today a miller says thank you very much for making the abcs for gamers book i'm very much single but the friends i gifted them to loved it all right cool is this where we get the forever alone memes coming up here oh yeah sorry hey someday someday i believe in you um uh all right uh uh pyro minion said nvidia just confirmed they expect editorial control over reviews in exchange for access to cards you know what this is the first i'm hearing of it though which uh either nvidia backtrack nvidia either

nvidia backtracks on this or it does appear that that's their expectation honestly i don't buy it i think this is personal and i think that it's just a phenomenally boneheaded way to go about cutting off someone that there's a personal vendetta against that's what i think um that's what i would like to think. I don't know anymore. I don't know anything anymore. All right. What else we got here? Oh, haha.

Sir Myself says, waiting for Linus Sebastian to follow Linus Torvald's example. I think you mean that thing that he said to NVIDIA and I think I already did it. So you won't be waiting anymore. Andrew says, the BS clickbait titles on LTT videos negate all ability to take lenis seriously anymore well it's up to you um to me the title is the packaging if the if the food inside is nutritious then i

don't really care um what color the packaging is i'll eat it anyway and you can disagree all you want and if you don't like it you can take take your business elsewhere. That's the way it is. But I don't make the rules. I don't make it so that people are more likely to click on this face or whatever. I don't like it either, but it is what it is. I've got a business to run and my business is bringing in viewers

and giving them the tech information that we do. All right, that's all there is to it. Guys, don't bother sending more super chats right now. There's already far more than I can go through. I already feel bad for not going through all of them. Like, okay. All right. Sean says, I would love to buy a mouse mat and some other things,

but shipping to the UK is insane. $20 or around 17 pounds. Is there any plan to lower the shipping? Last time i checked jet fuel very expensive um you guys enjoy royal mail over there which as my understanding is it's heavily subsidized in terms of international shipping so it's crazy i can order things from the uk and get them shipped for like three dollars and you guys can't do the same because incoming shipments are not subsidized by whoever you're ordering from.

The Canadian government does not subsidize shipping in any meaningful way. So we just like actually do have to pay for like what shipping costs. And that's just how it is. We make about 10% on shipping and we use that margin to run shipping promos from time to time. So all you can really do is bundle a bunch of things together in a cart or wait for a shipping promo. But I can tell you now with all the launches that we've had and all the launches that are coming up we don't have anything on the roadmap for shipping promos right now which isn't

to say it won't happen i'm just saying we don't have anything planned right now so that's kind of the inside baseball hit me is asking me to ask you if there's an update on the dell email dell email no that's dell email do you either i never heard back or uh whoever monitors that email uh never got back to me um okay i'm trying to remember clarification um dell employee email in ltTT inbox. I emailed them back. Did we ever hear back? All right. Thanks, guys, for letting me know. I'll fire that over to...

I know Colton at least knows who monitors that inbox, so I'll find out what's going on. What else we got here? QWERTY says, my fifth week of sending $6.90 Canadian. Waiting for Linus to acknowledge it. Sorry that took so long. Nice.

Okay, let's just do a couple more here. Thank you everyone who sent super chats just like in support of talking about what's going on with NVIDIA and Hardware Unboxed. Again, I'm not doing this for dollar bills in my G-string. The point that I made during that rant stood. I'm in a position in my life where I have the luxury of being able to buy my own RTX 3090s if I really feel like it. So thank you very much for your support, but just know that it's not necessary. LB says,us is a paid nvidia influencer don't buy the

act and many other youtubers are sellouts nvidia has always been evil and now they are exposed so those are serious allegations those are serious allegations and i know for a fact you don't have any proof of it because you're a dumbass so there's there's that um yes we have done paid deals with nVIDIA, but the important thing is that it's all transparent and the transaction is well understood by not just both sides, but also the community. That's why transparency is so important to us.

We did a sponsored piece, Gaming at 8K on the RTX 3090. We were clear to NVIDIA that we were going to say exactly only this and this, and that we wouldn't say anything we didn't believe. NVIDIA was clear to us thatIA that we were going to say exactly only this and this, and that we wouldn't say anything we didn't believe. NVIDIA was clear to us that the money was in exchange for just this video and no other understandings. And the community was informed of that business arrangement. That is how this works. In editorial content, no such thing exists. No such thing exists.

All right. David Lee says, first time I have seen you live because of time zone. Wish I joined more often. Hey, thanks. Thanks for coming in. All right. Yeah, thanks everyone.

I think I'm just going to go and give my kids a hug, right? Pearl says, hey, can you please do a video on best PC for music production? Actually, I haven't replied to the email yet, but I had a music producer reach out to me saying just didn't really have the expertise internally to create a meaningful benchmark that would be applicable to that audience. So we're working with that community to create something. Thank you for tuning in to the WAN show today. Hopefully I was able to make myself clear without going over the top top it was something that was very

close to me today the main the main topic of course i mean um thank you for listening thank you for understanding and we will see you again next week same bat time same bad channel bat bad is it it's a bad bad time oh because we're always late same bad channel and i'm just it's like self-denigrating humor same bad time same bad channel but it is a reference to 1970s batman same bat time same bat channel yep yep okay bye back when television shows were aired like at the same time and channel instead of just being on a streaming service yeah all right there goes the outro Outro Music