Alz Media.

Hell and welcome to this week's Better Offline.

I'm, of course your host ed Zittron and for this week's episode, I flew out to North Carolina to do a longer form interview, the first of it's kind on the show, a little slower, a little more fun, and I did it with Steve Burke, founder and host of gamers Nexus, an incredible hardware YouTube channel that's been going since two thousand and eight and has over two and a half million subscribers.

We talked about the history of gamers Nexus, the state of the hardware industry, tech journalism, gamers Nexus is incredibly scientific approach to hardware testing, and of course a little bit about AI.

I think you're going to really like it enjoy.

So how long has the channel been running?

How long have you been doing this?

Now?

About seventeen years and five months.

And we started off just doing gaming content.

I did go back in the files and found like a Modern Warfare trailer I think, and then the Office Space parody, which is awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it started as game reviews and trailer analysis videos, which was the Modern Warfare one and battlefield trailer analysis that was like a whole subgenre.

Back then you got the trailer, you kind of picked apart what's going to be in this game?

And you know, then I did game interviews.

We spotlighted a bunch of indie games through Steam's green Light program, and it kind of slowly got into hardware.

What was Greenlight?

Is that?

Like?

Is that kind of the early early access.

Yeah, that was Steam's thing where they gave indie developers who are unestablished kind of a way to try and get onto Steam.

And so we did a lot of early coverage of games.

Yeah, I saw you doing a lot of convention interviews.

How did you grow from there to where you are today?

Which is said huge studio and massive testing facilities and such.

The interviews and the stuff at the conventions was kind of the turning point for me because I was up until maybe twenty twelve or something like that plus and minus year, I was still technically in college.

And then I went to I went to pas Penny Arcade XPO.

I think I went to the twenty ten to one, and after I got home from that, I decided, this is kind of the only thing I want to do go to stuff like this, And so it took me two years but you know, eventually just dropped out and then yeah, then just started doing more of those, and it was it was the best way.

First of all, they're just fun, but then secondly it was sort of how I started actually meeting the people we would end up working with in the hardware industry.

Right, and did Well, how'd you get into testing?

Because I found one of you, I think your first viral clips, which was the testing a power supply with a paper clip, I believe.

Oh that was the that was to jumpstart a power supply to yeah, test it, yeah, to make sure it works.

So how did you move into that?

Because it it seemed like it took a minute to get there.

Yeah, so I think around So I started the site in two thousand and eight, I think officially, and then got into publishing PC build guides in around twenty ten or so.

So that's when the hardware really started.

And I'd already been building computers but hadn't actually really published much about it, So start publishing build guides.

I think it was just as simple as those were the first thing that had any kind of like readership because it was all articles back then, right, and so they were so you started out writing yeah, exclusively, and then the channel got added in two thousand and nine, but it wasn't treating you know, YouTuber was not that's not a job in two thousand and nine like that.

Yeah, it's a little before you like you had maybe Casey Nystadt was at the front edge of that.

Yeah, I think I think it was like maybe Vine was it was, it was still around when did Vine pop up?

Christ it was still asl but no back then, so you were just on the fringe of this new content.

Yeah, and it was.

I did not start a YouTube channel with the intent of making it a job, because I don't.

If you go on Internet archive, I didn't actually even remember this until recently.

And you look at the gamers Excess website and you go to the about page from like two thousand and eight or nine or ten, you'll see that somewhere in those really early years, I had said that we were running it without any form of banner ads, which is actually true today too.

We got rid of the ads when we reintroduced the website recently.

Right, But like point being, you don't do that having no revenue unless you aren't really thinking about trying to make it a sustainable thing.

Right, it was purely for fun.

And how did it become a sustainable How did it become your main job?

Yeah?

I think as YouTube grew basically, so we were kind of in the early We weren't the first sort of i'll call it generation of YouTubers who were able to successfully make it a job, but I would say we were maybe in the next generation right after that.

And so yeah, I started publishing more videos alongside the articles.

So it really was with case reviews computer case reviews, where we would originally just focus on only writing a case review.

At some point, I'm saying we a lot.

For a while it was just me and then every now and then it'd be soone to.

Help, but we would do case reviews.

And then I realized this would do well with video because there's depth to it and there's like just a lot of mechanical stuff, and those videos started doing pretty okay.

And did you move away?

When did you move away from the website, because I know you've come back to it.

Yeah, we probably around twenty I think around twenty eighteen maybe is when I kind of like mothballed it basically for a couple of years.

And that was just because at that point, we had just moved out of the house and into an office and then into the first office, and there was just too much content flow on the video side.

And up until that point, I was the only one who was capable of maintaining the site and publishing to it, not because it was a special skill, but because the website was so completely fucked up and cobbled together because.

I didn't have a CMS or anything it did, but I built it like, oh so right, okay, yes.

So I had a CMS, but I had stuff bolted onto it over twelve.

Years classic CMS.

Shit.

Yeah, and I'm not a professional web developer.

And don't worry, most CMS developers on either.

Yes, that was something I came to realize.

And so anyway, it's just more and more, you know.

All the pieces were falling off the car while I was driving it, and eventually I was like, I can't, I can't, Like I have to just do one thing and YouTube is not a platform I need to maintain, which is good and bad.

Yes, but yeah, we kind of put the website on ice for a while and then it wasn't until Wendell for Level one Text eventually approached me and he was like, hey, I'm a web developer actually, and he really wanted us to get our article, our content script preserved in article form again, right, because he's worried about just the loss of information you know through video, right, And so he set us up to where now people on the team like Jimmy are able to maintain the site.

That's really cool.

Yeah, and you've brought it back though you're somewhat more fun Like is it do you ever see the website growing into more of a media outlet or is it just and is it just you writing it as well?

Yeah, it's just us, you know, it's the same team.

It's the it's basically the video scripts that the team rights converted into an article and so sometimes like it's not.

Going to read as naturally as a pure article.

Might, but we try to adapt it and if there's any right now to me, it's like sort of a community resource where I know for us, at least internally, it's way more useful to have words, right, you.

Know, just skin through and control app than a video.

But also just like preservation wise, it's easier to preserve articles and videos.

Are you how is YouTube as a platform though, is it?

Are you a slave to the algorithm so much do you try and appeal to it?

Do you just make content?

I think their YouTube has a platform.

There's a lot of ways to feel about it.

For me, it's it's almost like asking me how I feel about water at this point, right, you know, it's like, how do you feel about water?

It's like, well, I mean, if I don't drink it, I die.

But like YouTube, it's it's not something I try to game or play to.

It's basically just a fact of life, right, you know.

It's like it's it's there, and I have to think about it, and every now and then I'll probably complain about it.

But realistically, I personally, I think it's kind of a fool's errand to chase quote unquote the algorithm too much because it kind of stifles and takes focus away from the thing that actually matters, which is the content, you know, and so like, yeah, there's things you can do, like you can play with the thumbnail or the title, but what I really wouldn't want to do is change the actual type of content that's been produced just for algorithmic purposes, because I think that that also creates kind of like a almost like a black hole of creativity where you stop producing the content for the purpose it was intended and you start producing the content to be a farm.

To use your phrase, at that point, become basically a slave to the algorithm where you can't escape it.

Once you start doing that, I think.

Yeah, at that point, you'll coverage is just dancing for somebody else who changes their mind constantly.

Right exactly, because it's you no longer know who the viewer is.

And it's impossible to know what YouTube wants because YouTube doesn't know what it wants.

You could probably ask a YouTube bene near a pointed specific question right about the algorithm and they would probably tell you they don't know.

So and has that has your experience with them being chaotic or is it?

Uh?

No, because believe it or not, they don't talk to us.

So, I mean, I've heard content creators who do argue with them.

I've heard ones that don't talk to them at all.

It's interesting to hear, especially your your two point six million this I think so yeah, that they don't interact.

Yeah, So there was a period where they would assign basically a channel rep to you, and so I would get on a call, I don't know, somewhere around maybe it wasn't the high hundreds of thousands of subs, And that was kind of cool because like, Okay, if something catastrophic happens, like let's just say, I don't know whatever, I get locked out of my account because I fudge the password too many times, something stupid like that, Right, like I at least have someone I can talk to.

Those people were rotated through.

Revolving door basically every three or four months, so right when you start to know the person and they can help you, they're gone.

And that was by design, I think, as far as I understood it, that program got killed.

We don't have a REP now, which is normal, and and the best I have is a a liaison.

He's called and he's a great guy.

He's very nice.

It's not really his job, you know, to help us, but he does it because he's a nice guy, and so he's like the guy for like dozens of creators.

Yeah, it's just so bizoved to me that there isn't a specific rep with with other people.

But like a rep whose job it is to kate, you would think that your entertainment talent on some level, you'd.

Think they'd want to be available to help, and I'm sure if you asked Google they would say that they do want to be available to help, and they are and you can tweet at them, you know.

Yeah, great.

Yeah, but that's the weird thing about these platforms.

It does feel like they're like they benefit as much as possible while providing.

So the revenue share is public, you know, for ad Sense YouTube ad Sense, so tho's the ads before after, in the middle of videos whatever.

I think it's forty five fifty five, with them getting forty five percent.

For perspective something like Steam.

I'm not an expert on this, but the last nieber I saw was something like thirty percent for Steam, and I think it's very able dependent on them for them, yeah, for them, So you know, YouTube certainly benefits.

They to argue in their favor, Hosting videos is unbelievably expensive, so I get it.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah, well the split's pretty high.

I'm okay with it, Like I actually, I'm fine with it with them getting forty five percent or whatever.

It is a bad sense because they don't impose restrictions on things like us selling our own ads, right, So it's like I don't really care, you know, and I don't care if people block ads on our channel or whatever.

I don't give a shit.

But like the I think it's it's only if if they ever overstep and they start restricting what you're allowed to put in your content in a way that beyond like I don't know, whatever they have their own rules about like hate.

Speech and stuff like that.

Right, it is fam Yeah, but like in terms of if they start restricting, let's just say they decide, yeah, you're not allowed to sell merch without giving us a cut.

No, then I'd have a big.

Propool style is the YouTube way you make most of the.

Revenue in one way or another.

Yeah, I mean YouTube is the reason it's possible to do any of this because I was doing it as articles only, and YouTube didn't really become a focus until I said, like twenty eighteen or so as a primary source.

And so yeah, through.

Mostly merchandise sales on our store, through Patreon support, which is, you know, the monthly donations from viewers, and then sort of after that it's like ads we sell.

And then ad sense right and wait, so you spent like a decade mostly just writing pretty much.

Yeah, probably probably till I would say, like till twenty fifteen, very seriously focused, not only writing.

Yeah, so was that your full time thing?

Did you have other jobs as well?

I did several side quests?

Yes, I would collect side quests from local business owners, you know, like Greeting's adventure.

I need a local website.

Can you build that for me?

It's a living, as they say in the Flintstones, it's and let's actually get really not necessarily super specific.

But what's your history, like, without getting to biographical, like how did you come in to do?

Are you?

Were you just naturally interested in this?

Was this just a childhood thing?

I guess depends how far back we go.

But gaming was always an interest and continues to be an interest, of course, I don't know.

I mean the first game I played was probably Lemmons.

Hell yes, yeah, hell yes Humans for me?

Yeah yeah, like first Lemmings game, yeah yeah, hell yes.

Now I'm so you were primarily a PC gamer though, yeah.

For sure?

Yeah so Lemmons, and then there are some other ones back then, and uh I played a lot of nes S nes N sixty four game, keep all that stuff, a lot of Nintendo eventually.

Got a PS two as well.

But but after the N sixty four era, so like early two.

Thousands was when I built my first computer.

Right before that, I was playing games like Command and Conquer, Red Alert, yeah, and things things of that nature on what you know.

This was back when every family had a quote unquote computer room, right, yeah, like there was a room for the computer.

Or a nook in Mike England's so small.

Right yeah, but like point being where it's just like this is the this is the dedicated computer area for the computer, this household chair.

Yes.

So I played games on that built computer, you know, early twenty penny and four and remained interested, and I guess I started really getting more interested in the coverage when we don't feel free to ask a file up if you're interested in this.

But basically I was running like a gaming guild like group of friends, you.

Know, nice So well, what were you gaming together?

Is that?

Yeah?

Counter Strike, Source Age, Evampires three ever, request, things like that you played?

Request?

Yeah?

Whatsoever?

I think I was on Kurana, I was on the Raith, I was moving.

I think Karana merged into the race.

I went on storm Hammer as well.

I paid the extra It was not worth it, man, oh, good to know.

Yeah, same scars.

Then I interviewed Brad McQuaid.

I have a long and storied history of being a problem for Sony online.

Statement asking like the one British journalist who asked any questions about this game, I got in lots of trouble.

Ever, ever quest I remember buying it.

When I bought it was when it was sort of demonized in some media as yeah, and also though specifically as like the don't there was like some kind of devil worshiping, like whatever, kind of like D and D.

Right, Yeah, D and D got the same treatment.

They didn't, but they didn't seem to have a problem with the fact that getting to level fifty was a job.

Right you had to work eight hours a day.

Yeah, Oh god, so you had this guilt?

Sorry?

Yeah, And long story short.

The website I had built for that group of friends with a forum that had all these gaming guides on it, we worked.

Very hard on.

As you know, we were pretty at that point.

We were mostly high school early college age at the at the highest end, and everyone put a lot of effort into making these guides.

And then at one point the website was hacked by just some common CMS breach, right, and I didn't know how to to restore from backup and didn't really know what I was doing, so I lost all the data.

And so you could imagine for a group of like teenagers, losing gaming guides is like devastating.

Yeah, it's like here, like my life's work.

A guy for how to rush and Asian Vampires.

Yeah, oh my, well, I mean that was game e fa ques there, I guess, but yeah, if you were making your own, they can't have been that good on game efic hues.

Yeah.

So the Library of Alexandria that yeah, sorry.

Yeah, yeah, so we lost that and that's when I made a new website and that was the Gamer's next to site.

So so you're all self taught then pretty much?

Yeah.

I mean self taught in the sense that there's not a lot of formal education, not self taught in the sense that the people I've worked with over the years, especially engineers in the industry, are the ones who actually taught me a lot.

Yeah, right, but nothing formal, I guess.

Yeah.

And it seems that something I've noticed with your coverage and actually the surrounding channels is it seems like people in hodware are relatively generous with that time, like there are some people who want but like a lot of the scientific people seem very key to it and want to help and make sure there's understanding.

Yeah, I think so.

I think people like the person who comes to mind immediately is Tom Peterson, who currently works at Intel, used to working on video.

But he's the type of guy where.

When you talk to him you can tell he's not in it because he's trying to sell Intel's or previously on videos product.

He's in it because he likes the technology, right, And so people like that, I think they tend to be happy to just share yeah.

Which is really cool.

And other YouTube channels as well seem like Lewis Rossman around Box, they seem like very they want to collaborate, which is really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah Rossman and Steve from hard run Box.

I've done a lot of videos with Yeah.

You're having fun, yes, because there's a lot of cynicism and kind of depression in media because of the job environment, but there's also even above that seems like just a depression around the work, but it doesn't.

It seems more fun what you're doing, and they indeed throughout the hogware people.

I think it's one of the things I kind of really actively spend a lot of time managing, is trying to make sure there's a cadence to the content where we actually just did this recently.

I kind of look at it and it's like, all right, this is We've had a lot of heavy stuff recently.

We had tariffs into black Market, into Bloomberg, you know whatever, and so then we switched to publishing more folks on reviews methodology.

I ran a review of a toy story.

Computer which I've seen and it's insanely cool.

Yeah, I actually kind of I don't know how good it is inside, but I love the look of it.

Fine, I had problems with shipping.

But but the point being, you know, we we do try to, like I try to manage what the tone of the content is and for how long, because you just you don't want to lose the fun of it, you know, And so yeah, I would say I would say also, even when it is a story that might be more maybe categorized as depressing, so like if you're covering some kind of corruption or something in the industry, there is still.

Fun to the job.

Of covering that thing where like the fun part is not necessarily the topic.

It's the trying to piece together something that's like really complex and figure out how to explain it to anybody.

I mean, the GPU tariffs, the tarrist one and the GPU black market stuff was very seemed like it probably sucked a little of your soul out, but that looked like fun.

It looked like a fun ben.

Is I mean, the tarist one, you know, it was It's a story that there were people we spoke to who are very negatively affected, and you feel for those people.

And that part is sad if you, you know, put yourself in that position.

But then on the the kind of keeping it fun for yourself covering it side, if you really just kind of step back and look at it's like how fortunate can you be to for your job be like I'm going to get on a plane in twelve hours, you know, and fly and then I'm not going to know where I'm going next until I get there.

Like that on its own is pretty fun.

Yeah, And that's it's very privileged to be able to do that and know that at the end of it it's going to be fine, you know.

Right, And so those and those trips were kind of semi chaotic.

Then they're very chaotic.

But that's like, that's why it's fun because you.

Got to was it Hong Kong and you immediately like got a price sheet for GPU.

Yeah.

Yeah, we were speaking with some suppliers and so we had a price sheet.

Yeah, we went to we went to China for that trip.

We met a guy we weren't planning to meet.

He was mister five in the video and he was awesome.

And where do you find these?

Is it people come to you?

Are they connections?

I realized YOUNI laterally you probably can't onnset.

But normally I normally I have a source for kind of the first link in the chain, right, and then it just kind of develops.

You meet a person, you hopefully leave a good impression with them, and then they might say, you know, hey, I know someone who might be interested in talking to you, and you kind of go from there.

And I think the biggest thing is like, and this is kind of challenging sometimes, but learning to to kind of roll with it where I operate at a relatively high level of anxiety in terms of preparedness, yeah, you know, and so to have a wrench thrown in where it's like, hey, you might be interested in meeting this guy.

I'm like, well, like my schedule is really I have figured it out.

You have to be willing to deviate from it.

Yes, that's the only way to there's kind of any good broadcast work.

Yeah, and you pulled it off.

It's good.

So you've got quite an operation here as well around how many people work.

With you day to day.

It's five to five to ten total day to day, so it just depends you know who's doing what each.

Day, right, And then mostly around editing the videos and stuff.

A couple editors slash camera operators.

We have a couple of writers slash testers, so kind of like if you're testing the product, you're probably the one who's going to write the review that often makes the most sense, not always, but and then editors often will shoot the b roll they need because they kind of they hit a clip, they realize they need something.

Yeah.

And then we've got.

A remote researcher as well who's been contributing to some of the new stories coming up.

Very cool.

Yeah, and how long does the video take?

Putting aside the obvious ones like the tarist one, which I think a little bit different.

How long does it take to get a review together, or like any particular video.

A review of I can give you actual numbers.

A CPU cooler requires forty hours of testing work where there's some kind of manual involvement from the technician, so that if we have one cooler, that's going to be someone's job for one week basically, right and so right now, that'll be Mike typically running those tests, and then the actual So if I write that review, it probably takes me two hours to write it, you know, it takes me the runtime plus ten or twenty minutes to film it, and then because you obviously have whatever mistakes that you know, you do retakes right, so runtime plus hundred twenty minutes, and then the editors I would say they typically take about eight hours to complete a relatively simple review edit plus some camera work.

So a cooler review you might be.

Somewhere in the range of fifty to max maybe sixty hours.

And then something.

Like like the black Market video.

If you don't count my time, so if my time is zero, I don't remember exactly how many hours we had in it.

It was.

I know if you count my time it was over three hundred hours.

Jesus, it might have been more like four hundred.

But and then the ASRock motherboard video we just did yeah on CPU failures and Azrok boards.

That one was like with editing and filming time, I think that was two hundred and forty hours.

So like, that's an example of a content piece that we will lose money on, but it's like it's subsidized.

First of all, I don't care because I want to do it.

Secondly, you do have to pay for it somehow, and so for us, we basically we raised so much money from the black market video, I'm able to go, Okay, that's paid.

For, you know, moove me through that situation.

Yeah, which the Azrok thing.

So the Azrok thing is they have some kind of yet unknown issue that is resulting in the death of CPUs expensive ones, and people don't know exactly what it is.

They haven't been entirely forthcoming about it.

It seems like they don't know what the fuck's going on.

And so we got a viewer's motherboard that had killed the CPU and did a bunch of diagnostics.

This was one of the instances where we couldn't come to a conclusion, and we decided let's just like, let's just publish everything and maybe someone can use it.

As the company being communicative of they been trying to fix things.

They appear to be trying to fix things, just not very successfully.

I would not say they've been communicative like they haven't.

I don't think they've done a good job at telling their customers what's going on.

Right.

So, how is your relationship in general with the hardware manufacturers you mentioned the Intel.

It sounds like you have some people who are friendly and yeah, others.

Yeah, it depends, you know.

I'm sure you've worked with enough people where the people are often different from the company in terms of the stance, and it really depends person to person.

But generally speaking, the companies are able to maintain a fairly open line of communication and be relatively mature about even criticisms because normally the people actually in between us and their bosses are pretty good at their job, right, you know, And so like there's a guy at who he's incredible at what he does because and I really don't think consumers, I think a lot of people don't know this job role exists, but it's really important and the role is effectively to be like the translator between outside criticism and internal action.

Right right, So not quite a PR role, but like a developer.

Not quite developer really.

It's almost like like tech marketing maybe yeah, but like they're not really marketing in the traditional sense.

But so the guy at AMD, he does a really good job because he's told me how if we have a criticism.

I asked me to what happens internally, and he said, well, normally, like marketing might go to him and kind of be like, what the fuck, Like why did Steve say this?

Or hardburn boxed or whoever, which is covered by Steve, I guess, but they might ask why did the Steve say this?

And it's his job to figure that out.

And he was telling me he normally just asked them, well is it true?

Right, And if they say it's true, then he says, well, then make it not true by fixing it.

See, this is the thing I've run a p off of.

And it's like when clients come to White they say that, I'm like, and many times said why did you do that?

Right?

And they say, well, it's not a fair I'm like, how is it unfair?

Because if you can explain to me, I can go and get this fixed, right, you have to explain to me for and it is interesting that that role has to exist.

But yeah, I mean, if it's just a communication problem, right, if they're like, well, it's it's true, but we didn't we don't like it.

Yeah, right, so it's got to be a real reason.

But yeah, most of the companies, the relationship is fine.

When they generally take criticism.

Well, the people who interface with us take the criticism well, because it's just a job.

The companies don't always.

Do you have any executive exposure?

Do you know if any executives watch?

I know that Johnson Juan once watched at least part of one of our videos, at least because it was communicated to me by someone it works.

With him, all bold, all caps.

Ye, I was told that he was not thrilled.

Oh that doesn't that doesn't sound like Jensen.

He's usually such a cool head.

But do you do you know if I don't even need names, but do you know if there's like a good amount.

Of them, Uh?

Sometimes, yeah, I mean we AMD we had a video where we were basically like begging them to not fuck up the launch of their nine thousand series GPS because their competition like no one had showed up for the consumer Intel.

They were kind of there, but they're like not super viable yet.

And anyway, I know after that video they had emailed us and this wasn't a thread I told them was on record, but they'd emailed us and said, uh, you know, basically their sort of executive marketing team had watched it and they did talk about the problems we raised, and that's cool.

It seemed like they addressed some of them.

Yeah, do you ever try and get interviews with them?

Yeah, occasionally, I mean, especially if there's like the Asus situation with their warranty as context for people has had an ongoing problem with customer support, where people who need a warranty field often end up posting online saying they got screwed.

Is this across the board or with specific things?

Definitely Motherboard.

I'm not sure about other categories because I really liked the.

Rock Gangs ally, but have had a few listeners say yeah, we've got some warranty issues and it's actually I kind of wanted to address that with you in the know.

Well that one.

I know a lot about the ally specifically yeah, So to like close the loop on the executive question, the Asus thing, I we published a series about the warranty problems.

We proposed a number of fixes, and eventually I really pushed them to let us speak to an executive and customer support.

They put a director of marketing in front of us, very very nice guy, yeah, but by his job right, And so I kept pushing back in him where I was like, look, man, nothing against you.

You know, you're not the guy.

And so they eventually got us to the to the right guy, which is something I try to remember too.

We really try.

To go to executive levels if possible, because if it's just some dude who was told to do with in, I can't really press him on the decision.

You can't punish him.

It's not really his decision making.

It's company, yeah, and he's not paid enough to like deal with it, you know.

So so we try to go above that person.

And we did the same with New Egg.

They sat a room.

Full of like four, I think through four executives with us a couple of years ago.

Yeah, so they a lot of times they'll play ball, which like credit to them, you know.

But the asues ally thing, the long story short on that is, we had a defect.

I want to say it was like the joystick or something.

We had some kind of defect.

We sent it in for actual repair on our unit anonymously or you know, as a pseudonym, and they sent us a photo of the xtue of the chassis where there was a tiny nick, like a tiny tiny crater that's basically the size of a pinpoint in the end the edge of the chassis that is purely cosmetic.

And this is something that like we literally put it under a microscope to see what they were talking about.

And they said it wasn't covered.

And they said that they would have to charge us.

I forget how much it was.

It was like ninety or one hundred and eighty or something dollars goodness to repair a problem that was unrelated to this cosmetic thing and was their fault, and they were trying to use it to charge us for the repair.

Yeah, so we ran that as a story, and you know, I mean eventually it was handled, but I don't count it as being done correctly if they find out who we are and then they fixed it.

That was the thing.

Because you said it was anonymous, like a dummy thing, right, and I assume you it with a different card with it, Like.

I think I bought it from like a retail physical story, right, so there's no.

Trace because I like that thing.

But now I'm like regretting.

That's a good device.

But it's like, hopefully it doesn't break.

Yeah, it's a great device as long as it never has a problem.

So okay, let's change.

Let's change tag to the industry at large.

And I want to talk to you about electronic arts because I know you just did a video.

My whole thing was, how does he get worse?

Because there's a company they've been dog shit for a while.

And that's a personal opinion.

I think that's an objective.

Yeah, I mean, look at the Maden franchise.

I think I don't know.

EA is like bizarre to me.

I don't get it.

I know you can look at their financial reports and whatever, but the powers at play and the EA acquisition, it's multiple governments through one connection or another.

And I think for a lot of people, regardless of what they think about social issues, it is just, if you really think about it, weird for government or government connected entities to start acquiring video game companies and I personally, like, I'm very skeptical of it because the US government in particular has dragged video games at every opportunity they get for decades.

It's always like the video games cause violence, you know, and it's from people who've probably never played an actual game in their lives.

And from one instead of this deal, it's mostly it's like Saudi money and PE money.

Yes, So it's yes, So there's private equity.

As he said, there's Saudi money through the PAF and then on the US side Affinity Partners, which is helmed by Jared Kushner right to former senior advisor to the President, and I think who he just sent over to some kind of peace discussion or something, so he's still involved somehow.

But anyway, so that's the US side where you've got PE money.

You have somehow indirectly the US government but through a former US government official and then his firm, the Affinity Partners, has received somewhere around two billion dollars of initial investment from the Saudi pif that was a New York Times report previous.

So is funded by the other people invested.

Yeah, And I think if I remember the numbers correct, it was close to ninety million dollars out of there, one hundred and sixty or so million in management fees for the last filing was from managing Saudi money.

And then you've got the PIF from Saudi Arabia working with this firm to buy EA Games.

One of the things we didn't talk about in the video that I just I hadn't really thought too much about it, and I saw some excellent comments that made me think more about it, But is that companies like EA Games control a huge amount of data that seems inconsequential on the surface.

It's video game data, Like, right, what is okay?

So what Let's just pretend there's a clean path for the data to exit EA Games and go to the US government or go to the Chinese or the Saudi rating whatever.

Right, Let's just pretend there's a path there.

They can't really do anything useful with your save game file.

But one of the things that does interest me, and I just want to maybe caution here that this isn't.

I don't think there's anything going on here right now, but.

I think there is the opportunity to abuse anti cheat systems, which are like kernel level software in most cases that run on the computer.

So if you wanted to deploy like some kind of root kit with very low level access to computers, you could do it through anti cheat solutions.

Now, I don't think this is.

Happening right, right, and so I want to make sure people know that because you don't want it sound like it's some crazy, wild conspiracy theory.

I'm just saying it's possible for it to happen.

But I mean there's probably a trophy of dated with the EA play or whatever horrible cloud service.

For sure.

Maybe they have chat logs that could be useful to elements.

Right.

The US government has talked about wanting to bring Gabe Newell in for a testimony of some kind to talk about radicalization of teens who play video games.

Right, and they're doing that with the Discord CEO.

I think or they are already did that.

Yeah, And I mean, if you want to go way back, right, this has been the circus has been had before.

It was just last time was with rock music.

Right, So god, I just as just said, it's like, I don't know how EA gets worse though, because you were sports I don't know if you're a sports fan or anything.

I'm aware of sports.

Yeah, I said, this is the one of the pigs that buys Madden every year.

It has got worse while also staying the same.

And I don't know, I mean, the only way for them to make it worse is to just have it steal your money at this point, just actually go through your Walter.

I just don't have they spoken of their plans for the company other than using.

AI Yeah, great, this is why you should film to expression.

Yeah, just the the revulsions like you melt it.

Yeah.

And that most of the debt, it looks like he's going to it's sort of most of the revenue is going into the debt as well.

Yeah, I think it's I think it was like a twenty billion dollar debt or something that they have to pay down relatively fast.

I don't remember how much pre you're off the top of my head, but it's it's enough where not sure exactly what the game plan is.

But the current CEO, who's remaining in the CEO at least right now, I think his name is Andrew Wilson, I want to say, has stated that they have plans for use of AI EEA, and I think the as a whole have stated use plans for agents AI agents.

The very real thing that exists, great stuff fucking EA.

So that's how they do it.

They become a AI and it sucks even harder.

But let's change topics to another weird acquisition investment.

Intel, how do you feel about this in Nvidia Intel situation?

I think the Nvidia Intel US government situation, Yes, it's really weird.

I am not I mean I don't like it.

I think I understand the US government's interest.

I'm sure they look at it as absolutely a national security asset.

It's our only way we can even dream of making relevant competitive chips in America.

And so if for some reason you needed a local resource to do that, Intel is it.

So I get it, But at the same time, the way it came about is kind of bizarre to me.

Where the timeline of events was.

Trump says Intel CEO lip Putin is quote highly conflicted, and that the only resolution to this problem of being highly conflicted would be for him to resign.

The reasoning it seemed for that belief of being highly conflicted is pasted or current investments by Intel's current CEO in Chinese companies, including some which I have Chinese military ties.

So that's my understanding of that event.

Immediately following that, within days, well within one day, Intel respond publicly.

Intel CEO within days gets on a plane, meets Trump.

Now they're friends.

Trump says it, calls him a success.

And then shortly after this, you know, you're on this this roller coaster, Intel stock the whole time plunges when he says he needs to resign.

It's skyrockets, you know.

And then shortly after all that, the US government is effectively acquiring ten percent of Intel, right and yeah, I mean, and on then video side, after a couple of weeks after this, Stop and Video is acquiring five billion dollars worth of Intel, which I think is around four percent or something according to Reuters.

So I just I don't really know.

I guess my answer is, ed, I don't know what's happening anymore.

And that's kind of where I've come down in this whoop, because it's not clear what happens next.

They're going to do something together.

Do you think they're going to keep making the elk GPUs or is that because they haven't said they're going to stop making them.

I think they're at risk.

I that was a that was an unintentional pun.

Very few people will get no, I loved it nice.

Yeah, I think there is some risk there.

So, like the stated plan is that they're going to work together on X eighty six, which is an ISA and instruction you know, architecture that is used in CPUs, and they want to work together on x eighty six solutions, which there's not a ton OF's.

There's a lot of ARM there's Intel, and there's AMD for x eighty six for the most part, some via but and they also are planning to work together on envy Link integration, which was Nvidia's actually effective solution was that.

They go through Mellano's acquisition.

Mellanox is their networking infrastructure, right and envy Link is there sort of on board, although now it's expanded, but basically PCIe alternatives.

Oh okay, so so PCI Express wasn't doing it, friend VideA.

This is actually one of the areas where it's not just all marketing bullshit, Like envy Link serves a real purpose.

It does a real thing and and they need it.

And so they're going to work with Intel to integrate this protocol into other products which will make end videos.

GPUs more lolliable on CPUs like x eighty six CPUs.

Right, do you think there could be a good thing about this?

Could that actually be a positive?

It'll definitely be better for Nvidia's solutions.

I mean, if you want to look at it purely in a vacuum of ignore literally all business and all competition aspects and look at only the product level, their product should be better as a result of it.

In theory, I think there's risk to both and the end to Intel here.

So in particular, something that's interesting that a lot of people don't know is the mobile the laptop side of the business where this is another stated goal of NVIDI and Intel is they want to make laptop hardware, so they want to make silicon with RTX chiplets, which is a tiny piece of silicon for the the sc or the CPU.

And on the laptop side of the business, the entire industry aligns to end Video's schedule.

So if Nvidia and Intel previous we're both launching a CPU and this just happened at about the same time they launched a cp in a GPU between the two of them, the vendors will align to Nvidia's GPU, meaning all of the marketing effort, the money, the sampling, the review guidance where you know they will get in touch.

With reviewers and educate them on the new architecture.

All of that basically happens around Nvidia's timing because Nvidia sells units, right and so because of that, if Nvidia is suddenly, you know, if they launch a new GPU for mobile right now, Intel and A, it doesn't matter which CPU is in it, MSI or Asus or hpuor the Nobo or Dell.

They' launch their notebook with whatever CPU doesn't matter.

The Nvidio GPUs the part that matters to them.

If Nvidia is working with Intel, then suddenly it would seem that there's motive for them to leverage allocation of GPU Silicon with the intent being to get more Intel Nvidia co branded.

CPUs deployed in notebooks.

You see where I'm going with this.

Yeah, because this is kind of a long tail thing.

But it's like the old ms DOS situation, Yeah, where OEMs just ultimately went with dot because could Nvidia push down prices?

I su moor, Well, I mean they they historically have been I don't know.

I guess you'd say maybe revolted against an EVJ situation.

But we've covered plenty of vendors in the past.

I'll just name them now because it's been long enough.

But like a sus, MSI, Gigabyte, and EVJ have all told us about times where allocation, which is the it's the pot of gold, right, it's it's how many chips they get, is withheld or is modulated based on their willingness to comply with whatever the current sort of requirements are.

And what would those requirements be.

In the past, it's been stuff like well, I mean, on an EVGA side of things, they had always told us about being restricted in their ability to design certain high end boards that might have like overclocking solutions, engineering solutions, and so there was there was kind of like a trade behind.

The those restrictions happened.

They do they need something of an nvidious.

Side or well sometimes yeah, but it can be like we need you to not do that, or we need you to sell a certain amount of this priced class of card.

So as an example, there was a time where we'd reported when multiple sources at EVGA informed us that the MSRP cards were not actually real, like they were going to exist for a short period for launch to comply with Nvideo's requirement, and as soon as it was no longer a hard requirement to get the allocation, they were going to kill the product because they didn't have margin.

And so they effectively had to release something that made the money.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah, there was one I think we reported on where they were making like four box or something, and that's on a that was I think that was like a three hundred dollars something Boar Christ Yeah.

Yeah, so this is fairly typical for nvidio.

This kind of allocation is is their leverage.

Yeah, it's also how they create internal competition between the board partners.

Now AMD does this too, and so does Intel.

I think with Intel the differences they don't really have anything that.

A ton of leverage at the moment, not really.

Yeah, and AMD, you know, they they also play games with allocation.

I think the difference is nvideo is just the difference is if you make nvideo products and you make am D products like GPUs, you can lose the AMD ones or ten percent of the supply or whatever and still be in business.

But if you lose the nvideo ones, you're fucked, right Like business is over.

So they could use this with CPUs.

There could be a scenario.

That is my concern.

Yeah, my concern is if they're in mobile with CPU and GPU.

Now it's not just they're aligning to Nvidya's GPUs.

There's again a there's no evidence they're planning to do this, but I think I've seen enough historical context to be concerned about a possibility where they say, Hey, we'd really love it if you would put more of the Intel RTX CPUs in your notebooks so that you can get enough fifty ninety GPUs.

Oh so they will, They'll use one, So okay, now I understand.

So it's the leverage with other cards that they'll use the force of this.

Yes, potentially potentially.

I know that this is and this they've done this for years, like.

Yeah, yeah, allocation is a is a big lever.

Do you think they do similar things with the AI GPUs.

Uh, I don't know.

I don't really talk to because that would be probably more like Dell HP like those big enterprise deployers.

I don't really talk to people there.

I mean to me, it just seems like this is kind of a company culture thing, and this is all this is all me speaking from what we've reported on.

You know, we have some facts for some of the stuff where we've we've covered it, like with the EVJ situation, but yeah, enterprise, I'm not sure how exactly that side works.

So when it comes to AIGPUS, is there is it a limitation of your testing as the way you don't look into them because it felt like it's the one thing I'm like surprised that you haven't dug into more with like a one hundreds h one hundreds, Like.

Yeah, So there's sort of there's like two sides to it.

There's testing and then there's just reporting on whatever the news is.

And so the reporting part we did that with the black market video.

The testing side, I guess there's there's like a couple of things that are nested with in testing.

So we've done a little bit of quote unquote AI testing and that was on the RTX or six thousand Blackwell GPU.

This is something that is still new.

It's not one hundred percent clear to me what is a reproducible reliable test, right It's part of the problem is if you're testing LLLMS or generative AI or whatever, something that makes images by nature of the application, it's almost semi it's different every time.

We would also need a massive cluster to really emulate what it is because one A one hundred or eight one hundred isn't really gonna happen.

Yeah, and that's kind of like you can run those tests.

But and this would be a valid request from the audience.

I think an audience that really cares about it would be like okay, cool, So like what about if you have you know, ten of them or whatever.

And even then, how do you even practically?

Yeah?

And I just I think we can do it, and I do think we'll probably integrate some kind of long term testing for single GPU boards or dual GP single boards.

But it's right now, it's so new that to test it properly requires a lot of research and a lot of sort of trial and error.

Well, so how would you even because with something like GB two hundreds or GB three hundred, they've got their own distinct cooling.

You're not going to get a giant racking wherever you want.

Yeah, there's there's definitely a limit.

And what are you testing for?

It's just I've I have spoke spoke to a few listeners and like, oh what about AIJ why's you know, and it's kind of on some level, what would you even be testing?

Yeah, I think that's a big question for us, And I think that's where like the most immediate thing that would maybe make sense for us would be some kind of consumer level I really hate to call things AI, but like AI application.

So maybe that's someone wants to just buy a fifty ninety or whatever, use it for gaming, and then at night they're training something on it, or they're running some kind of system.

That's the I think that's the most sensible thing we could test anything where you're getting into like actual data center workloads.

I it seems like the only real source for that stuff is basically first party at this point.

And semi analysis to an extent.

Yeah, you spoke with them at all.

They've reached out, not some analysis, but I know the work.

Yeah.

I mean it's a good news Letterum just cure surprise.

They haven't the depth they go into.

But let's talk about AI.

Actually, how do you feel about AI?

Like you you don't do a ton about it?

Yeah, which is fine, it's just how do you feel about it?

And what?

Why haven't you done more?

That?

Not as a negative.

Yeah, most of the coverage we've done has been news based, so it might be reports, you know, it might be like an investigation or whatever, but but not a lot of I don't know, like testing, like we're talking about the biggest problems I have with it right now are First of all, I think if we go like really big picture, I don't know to qualify everything.

I think there are use cases for things like LMS.

The best use case I have that I've actually used is translation where I speak other languages, and I use Google Translate for most of that.

Because Google Translate is a dumb translator.

It translates the words you type into it.

Sometimes that doesn't work for a colloquial phrase, right right, So if you take any idiom, it's not really going to do that well through Google Translate.

Something like chat GPT makes it a little easier sometimes to search for like really specific colloquial or idiomatic ways to express something.

So I would say that's like a real use case.

You can also be deep down there, Yeah, but it is like the specific thing that they're kind of built around, so they do it well.

I think the.

With that qualifier out of the way, the big picture concerns I have with AI are weaponization of things like LMS to propagandas and so this could be for companies to market products, it could be for governments, it could be for unknown entities whatever.

But having seen the bot comments on.

Videos you know every day, is that the problem?

It is a very consistent problem, and they're getting better.

So what are they doing?

So originally it started as the really obvious ones.

There were kind of two kinds.

There's the bots that do financial scam scams where they basically.

Post something about like some cryptocurrency, right, some scam coin.

The other one would be the bots that have a photo of someone's ass, you know, and then three emojis and some text about whatever.

And that's the more like traditional trying to scam.

Some went into interacting with a fake user that presents themselves as an attractive person.

So those are the two common types of bots.

Historically, those have been really easy for a savvy user to identify because yeah, it's like it's always the same language.

It's like the old old you know, Nigerian prints email scam right right, you can read it and you're like, I know this is a scam.

But where it's going now kind of concerns me because there have been times where I'm not sure if it's a bot or a real person, right, And there was one recently I just banned from the channel that originally I thought it was a user because I forget what the message was.

But it was like, I wonder what Steve and Wendell think about blah blah blah, And it was clearly polling stuff from the title and or the transcript of the video and then create an account.

And I left it alone for a minute to see where it would go.

And there's like replies under the thread where it's a bot replying to itself through different accounts I guess, uh, and eventually just tries to you off site to go you know, get scammed.

So I banned all those accounts.

But the thing that was concerning was was that it's pulling context from the video transcript and forming a sentence that makes sense, right, and then creating the appearance of a real dialogue between the appearance of real users about this subject that.

Made sense to then scam someone.

I've seen these people in blue sky for sure.

Yeah, sorry, seeing these boots in blue sky where it's just someone appearing to have a guy.

It's like, wow, I read that from the thing.

Well do you think about this?

Right?

I've never seen them get to sending me to a website, but I imagine that's that's a few down the change.

The way it normally happens.

If you go to like CNBC or any finance channel, and you'll see these on any new video they post.

They all talk so like CNBC is my favorite one to look at for this because okay, you'll see and it's not their fault, they're just the target of it.

But you'll see a bot comment that'll say something like I have hundreds of thousands of dollars and I don't know how to invest it right, right, And it's always some ridiculous number.

Yeah, and then there's a reply to it.

It's like I had excellent luck with John Smith, and John Smith is the comments like, yeah, they're comments.

I've seen these in Korra.

Okay, it's like, how do I invest one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?

It's like, well, I did it on right oscoin or whatever.

Yeah.

But these they'll talk about like the name of a person and have this fake conversation about some financial advisor who doesn't exist, and then you google that name, which is fairly unique, right, so that's the only thing that comes up.

And then it's a website that's a scam, and they you know, these.

Point new ones compared to the original one.

It's it's less obvious than.

By questionable cryptocurrency or nft on website.

Yeah.

I don't know how you even deal with this.

I don't know what the solution is other than just chutting them all down.

Yeah, the channel owners have to ban them, but there's too many.

You get a lot reddit to them, seeing I don't know if you're active on your subreddit much.

I haven't checked.

Not too much.

Yeah, I'm in mind too much.

But I do catch someone occasionally who is just an obvious bar sick host, disgusting.

Yeah, but I just I ignorantly just assumed that they were being annoying and they were there to sow discord rather than send me to something to buy.

Right.

I think that's the thing too.

I forget who the report was from.

There was a recent report about something close actually, I think I saw it re reported and fact checked by Kurtzkazak to the channel where it was close to like fifty percent of Internet traffic is bought.

Yes, yeah, and that's gonna fuck the ad industry.

It's gonna be bad for everything because like, fuck the ad industry.

It's gonna be bad for humanity.

Well.

Oh, to be clear, I don't care about the idea.

I'm saying that that's how everything's paid for online.

Yeah, it'll screw that all screw it's this is like Library of Alexandria is on fire.

Yeah.

Problem like this is this is like loss.

Of of knowledge issues.

And I think it's because, uh, you know, there's there's been a consolidation of sites into media forms of media or media for presentation like videos, discord things where it's not well preserved.

And as those.

Things collapse, because like you said, the ad industry collapses or whatever, there's gonna be a loss of information and knowledge.

The death of the internet.

Uh, you know, it's gonna happen from the the fact that you can no longer tell if you're the only real human in the threat or not for the conversation, right, and so you're gonna stop interacting at all because you don't know if they're.

Bots or not.

You think that this is gonna happen.

I think it's happening.

What I don't know is are the companies that can control the large platforms incentivized to stop it.

I wonder because there is a level of, like any engagement, it's good engagement, but if people don't engage what they're going to.

Do, there might be a tipping point.

Maybe right now it's something they don't really touch.

Like, you know, it took YouTube and awfully long time to start effectively addressing the bot problem, right and they still haven't really done it, and so.

And that was just bot commenters or so views.

Yeah, well there's that too.

Yeah, there's I don't know too much about the view side, but the bot commentser's side.

They it's hard to know.

Are they dragging their feet on this as a counterintelligence operation?

If the bots are intentionally really stupid, then they could be useful for trying to determine what are YouTube's countermeasures to get rid of those.

Bots so that they can still convent them.

Right, So you maybe if you're playing YouTube side of it, you know, the thought is we don't want to just ban these because they're going to figure out our mechanisms we use for more important one.

It's exactly you know what, I actually buy that third because that's exactly what they did with s E.

With sh They're just like, well, we couldn't possibly tell you how this works because someone would just do it.

Yeah yeah with Google or Google.

Yeah, they own YouTube, so it's like Jesus fucking cut.

And the other thing too.

You know.

There's that, But there's also if you want to take the more cynical side, the less YouTube side, it could be that they want to report high engagement numbers to shareholders.

Yes, and bots do that.

Well.

I mean they did that with by combining Gemini with Google Assistance and they had three hundred million I think weekly active views or something, right, Yeah.

So but then the result is there may be a tipping point maybe at some point human engagement that's like somehow verified, which is scary for a different reason.

But human engagement becomes almost artisanal.

Like the reason you buy something from Etsy instead of Amazon.

You know, some guy made it in his garage.

Yeah, and so.

Etsy full of bots.

Now that's ultimate.

Do you subscribe to the whole dead Internet theory?

Do you think that?

I think parts of it are starting to look.

Practical, Like Facebook, I feel.

That's my one where it's just like this is like old people screaming at their TV at this point.

Yeah, and it's filled with bots that either trick them or that and raise them into a response.

One of my favorite things to do is if you go on Facebook and you type in Facebook support into the chat bot ah, and you find the groups that are people thinking they're posting on Facebook grip and I know there's one of them that has like ten thousand people on it, and it's people like boomeras.

I hate to sound out, but it's like people in the seventies being like, I don't know how to compute work, and three guys from Indonesia responded like, I would love to help you.

His number from Indonesia, which is Facebook support is.

I mean, it's kind of it is the the basically there's investment comments like on CNBC I was talking about where it looks like a real thing, you know, in this case, it maybe looks like actual Facebook support, right, And the end result is maybe maybe it's someone trying to help, Maybe they're enthusiasts, you really know face.

Oh it's all Indonesian scammers.

Okay, I've looked through.

I may have spent a few hours of what like just I could be doing literally anything else just looking at them, and it's entirely guys in the Global South just defrauding people.

Yes, and there's whole channels now that are built around scam busting, right, Like I forget the names of some of them, but there's like YouTube channels where they'll they'll walk through kind of the bot scam link.

I think the AI stuff, the lms, you know, the core question of like what do I think of AI?

All of those can be tools for good things.

I think the bad things right now are very profitable.

It's the dumbest bad thing that's profitable as a scam.

But even then it's not profitable for the AI companies.

It's profitable for the scammers.

It's like the only people making money all Jensen Hwang and scammers.

Right.

Yeah, And maybe there's I don't know, there's probably some like Fortune five hundred company that thinks they're making money on it.

I don't know that I've found.

But no, OK, maybe there's one.

No, this is like my one hyper focus of like anyone who mentions the revenue with AI, I know.

Well there was one, wasn't there some report that said, what was it like over ninety.

No ROI amazing report.

Amazing report because you know it was good because immediately people said hit piece.

The moment it says hit piece, you know that it's the true just people immediately think it's a hit piece.

Do you remember who the report was by.

It was by the Nanda lab mit.

Oh wow.

And people got really assy about it because they said, oh, it's just a bunch of interviews, that's how they did it.

How the fuck do you think surveys work?

Right?

And so they spoke to no, they spoke to a bunch of Fortune one hundred I think CEOs and people really miss reddics.

They said, oh, it's a learning gap between people using this and not understanding AI.

No, the paper says it's a learning gap because the ais don't learn, but no one reads.

Okay, but it's it's so strange as well, because it's everywhere.

But it's also nothing.

And I mean it feels like there is AI within the hardware.

Well with like I forget, forget the term the upscaling ones, Yes, do those generally work?

That's actually a really good point.

Yeah, so, and.

That's different to large language books different transform based that's that's really good DLSS and such.

DLSS is like a real thing that works and does it's good.

Broadly it's effective, I mean.

And that's when it fills in the frames.

Right DLS.

So there's kind of like sub technologies they have, but broadly speaking, DLSS originally started as just it stands for deep learned super sampling, and it started where they would take ground truth images, meaning like basically we're saying this is reality, and I think there were sixteen K resolution.

They're ridiculously high resolution.

They would train on all these images and then use that data game by game to be able to upscale from a lower native render resolution to a higher i'll call it projected resolution to the viewer, to the user.

And that was the original implementation and it is pretty good now.

Like it's actually if you need to run at ten adp native so that your video card can handle the game at a good frame rate but make it look higher resolution, a lot of times it works and actually two N video's credit, DLSS in some situations can be better than native, which shouldn't be possible in theory, but because of the way they've actually integrated the deep learning on it now, which has been rebranded.

These days to AI.

Of course what it was called.

Deep learning because the way they've integrated it, it can sometimes reconstruct details that should be there but are not, and we've done some videos on that.

But yeah, that's a use case of deep learning.

Then that's completely different to the world of laws of language.

Yeah, it's not an LM.

Yeah, it's like it has a singular purpose, right, make the thing look better, or generate frames to insert to smooth it over, and that's overall not bad.

Also, there's places it's really useless.

Yeah, But I think also though, the difference is when that technology is useless, it's not really harmful, whereas when an LM is useless, it is harmful because it's it's putting bad information.

Out or just even if it's not being used particularly well and someone's just fucking around with it, it's incredibly environmentally damaging.

That is a great point as well.

Yes, they a fe your stuff being plagiarized for the models, you know.

For models, Well, I know I did a there was a great one where I did a Google search and I searched for the release date of a product, and you know, Gemini spat out in a.

Year and it was wrong by two years, and I was like, what the fuck?

And I clicked to see what its sources were, and one of its top source was us, and I was like, what the fuck?

Did we screw that up?

Yeah?

Like what ended up happening?

So I went to our own article and it was a revisit we had published two years after the original product came out, and we made that clear in the article.

But it's just looking at the published date and mapping it to the product name, and it decided this is the release date two years later, you know.

And and so like.

It learned or took from our content, misrepresented it, misrepresented it, and then credited the incorrect information to us.

So now it also makes it look like I got it.

Wrong, right, So everyone loses, including the customer.

Yeah, it's a shame though, but I mean I feel like in the whole AI generitive world, your stuff is more valuable, the very hands on, very specific work and the very hardcore testing you though.

It's also we're fortunate that it's kind of at the front end of like, if we're reviewing products, then.

Someone who's an enthusiast trying.

To decide on a purchase is still coming to us before it's useful in training.

So I imagine the generative content is kind of antithetical to the kind of testing you do as well, because you can't really fake because.

Not really, you can't really like generate a review, you know, it would be obvious.

And also you have these massive machines for testing stuff here, yeah, which are insanely cool.

And actually that's a good question.

How do you source this kind of stuff?

Do you buy from industrial because you have like pressure tested, Well, actually, maybe you could speak to some of the machines.

Run through it.

Yeah, So yeah, we have a Hemiana Quick chamber, which is a sound chamber and acoustic test chamber.

We have a laser scanner that does three D scans of like of products.

And converted some into three D models.

We have pressure testers, we have fan testers, cooler testing, and then more traditional power supply tester stuff like that, and so yeah, generally, the way we go about it is we identify a problem.

Typically, this is kind of the part of the business I work on the most personally, is like basically test engineering or design.

So we identify a shortcoming, which is like this product is claiming this thing.

We are not able to validate or invalidate their claims because we don't have the tool to do it.

And then either I just do some research online and find the tool, or you know, sometimes the real challenge is knowing the name of a thing and that it exists.

And so I went through this with current clamps, which is just a clamp you put on a wire to read the current going through it.

A long time ago, when I started this, I didn't know that was a tool that existed.

And it's like magic because you put a wire through a client a plastic looking clamp, and then through the magic of electromagnetics, it tells you what the amperage is.

And when I found that, you know early and it's not a new it's been around forever.

But when it was new to me, I was like, holy shit, this is If I only knew the name of this thing sooner, I could have bought it.

And all of your testing is effectively new to you.

You've had to kind of build it and learn yourself with help from right, with.

A lot of expert help outside.

And yeah, I would say sourcing it mostly comes from either just doing research or we tore a lot of factories and engineering facilities and make videos on it, and normally when I'm there, I do my best to talk to the actual people who use that equipment.

And that's that's kind of how we learned that it exists, you know, Like I did a tour recently of a facility where they showed us something that they had built for a client for testing cooling products.

And when they.

Were done explaining it so I could talk about it in a video, I said to them, can I buy.

One of those?

You know?

But the yeah, yeah, yeah, they sell it, so that's so cool.

Yeah.

And do they come and train you to use it?

Sometimes you can.

You can either pay for training or they'll do it for free for up to whatever four.

Hours or something.

You know.

And do you generally operate these machines or do they train the.

Crew generally, either I'm the first one to learn how to use it, or someone specific on the team might be one of the first ones to learn how to use it.

So like we had.

For the laser scanner, it was Patrick on the team who ultimately in that case I had tasked him with learning how to use it, and he went through he documented it you know, and now anyone can use the sop.

And the laser's kind of you describing to me earlier.

It's used that to see if there's devotes ye, like in the in the cooling you explain.

I'm surface, I'm doing it terrible job.

Now you're pretty much right on it.

I mean it's yeah, cooling product has a flat surface that needs to contact a piece of silicon.

And what we're looking for is, Okay, the performance is really good or really bad thermally, and we can't look at it and figure out why.

Maybe if we scan this at a microscopic level, it'll reveal something.

And so sometimes.

It'll reveal that there's these like deep pits in the surface of the metal that you can't necessarily see by eye and can really affect the cooling performance.

Other times you might see a curvature to it where maybe externally it's not obvious, but actually when you install it on the silicon product, say only two thirds of it or contact in the metal.

And so this laser scanner scans the surface with the laser and then makes a three D model, and we can use that to inspect the problems.

Do you ever get do companies ever reach out for any consultancy things.

They do that all the time.

We reject all of it.

So because it's too much.

There's a lot of reasons.

The core of all of it is it's too much conflict of interest, right where let's just like, let's just say it's possible to take a testing job, a private testing job, and do it with absolutely zero bias towards future reviews.

I just we'll just accept that premise for a second.

Even under those conditions, I still don't like it because now I'm putting a weird spot where when that product launches, it's gonna be hard for me to review.

It because you, oh, because you've already seen it.

I've seen it, and I might have provided input on it that they paid for.

If I'm involved.

Right, So, now, like let's say I'm not happy with their execution, What am I gonna go say?

I told them so, right, Like.

That's not how much can you reveal?

And even then I mentioned the trade secret so brilliant.

You probably end up under an NDA.

The best approach to that would be to recuse yourself from reviewing it at all.

But then the problem is, like now I can't do my job for consumers.

Yeah, how good is the money on?

I like?

Yeah?

And I also think it just cannibalizes the process where you're taking things that would make excellent public videos and public data, and you're presenting it privately to never be seen by anyone.

Right And by the nature of these agreements, I imagine they could obfiscate your coverage on some level.

I would think so.

And also it's just, yeah, you're taking the thing that made you desirable to do the testing to begin with.

You're doing it privately, so it's not public, So the desire to have you do the private testing reduces, right, right, Like it seems like it's just a sort of self sabotage.

But how do the hardware companies feel about you having such high level testing?

Most of the people think it's cool, right, you know, I think the I'm sure a lot of them don't care.

I know that some of the company representatives have told me how they'll be more careful with how they market certain things if they know we're gonna yeah rocks.

I actually genuinely love that.

Yeah.

So, and that's not just us, you know, there's other reviewers who also do an excellent job.

And because the review community.

People kind of specialize in different areas.

I think it just sort of collectively keeps companies somewhat on their toes.

But obviously you know the company is going to company.

Yeah, they will shit about regardless.

What is a kind of testing you can't do right now that you want to in the future.

I would say the probably the the Well, so there's one we can do, but it's not really practical, and that would be basically more frequent transience testing.

So there's something with power delivery.

I know you've been studying lately where where there's transient spikes and so on a GPU or a CPU.

This would be.

A basically microscopic spike in the current or the power consumption right for really like normally like one hundred microseconds or something.

We can test it.

We've done in the past.

But because if you're capturing data for seconds out of time, down to scales of thirty microsecond gaps or whatever, the amount of data is enormous, it's really hard to process.

It's like a storage and processing problem.

Yeah, it's a major processing problem.

And what would you want to be so is that if there is, what would those spikes mean?

It would help us to stay on top of especially GPU manufacturers, but also CPU if if there's sudden spikes that might take a system offline.

So as an example, this happened with a previous generation of both Nvidia and mdgpus, but where they would have large spikes and power draw that deviated from the non old draw.

So if you're at four hundred and fifty watts and there's a spike to eleven hundred watts for one hundred micro seconds or something, this might be enough to trip over current protection on the power spot and just shut the computer off.

And then the end user is like, what the fuck?

My power supply is enough to handle four hundred and fifty.

Watts right off?

And this happened that Yeah.

We saw this with I want to say it was the thirty series, the RTX thirty series, and like it was a problem that doesn't show up in normal power testing, but within a silloscope you can see it.

And uh again credit to end video for the problems we point out.

On the positive side, they did actually fix this problem in the forty series.

Yeah, so here's here's a weird one, but I know it's near detO heart Linux Gaming.

Yeah, are you actually, do you think this is a viable alternative to Windows with Windows ten kind of dying will being killed in the bag?

Yeah, I think.

I think Microsoft is the best marketing that Linux has ever had.

I go on, Yeah, My.

Biggest concern with Windows is not like the death of ten ongoing security support.

It is the slow intrusion of spyware.

Well like recall.

Yes, you know where recall is marketed as this secure, locally saved, encrypted reel of your information.

But to me, like capturing screenshots of your desktop while you use it at all is problematic.

Yes, and we've done some testing.

It's not published yet, but it'll do some dumb filtering so if it sees the word password on the screen, it won't take a screen shot, right, But like, you're not always going to have one of those words on the screen when it shouldn't take a screen shot.

Right.

Maybe you have some accounting documents open, you know, and it's information that's sensitive, but recall doesn't know it's sensitive.

And uh, it's stuff like that that concerns me, where it's breachable and exploitable because it exists not necessarily because there is an exploit, right and uh, and then Windows eleven is continuing to add telemetry and user data and engagement monitoring tools.

And that's kind of a big feature of home s, like all the horrible s operating systems, the cheap ones.

Yeah, it's yeah, everything that.

It's just there's so much data harvesting, you know, Microsoft's This is why I think Microsoft hasn't really cared too much in recent years.

If you if you don't license Windows.

They used to really care.

About that, yes, because now it's like, yeah, go ahead and steal it from us, like we're going to just take all your data and that's how we make the money anyway.

Horrifying.

But do you think Linux is viable as a gaming plot?

I think it as a gaming platform specifically, I think it's becoming a lot more viable.

So thanks to Valve and the Steam deck ands and it's pushed for Proton as a translation layer between the application and.

The operating system.

And what is that just for the Yeah, so Proton is it's a translation layer, which means it's working to effectively interpret the code that is that the game is built with to run with better performance or at all on a different operating system in this case Linux or Stemos specifically, and so because of Valve's work on that to make games more compatible, run smoother, you know, deliver consistent frame rate and pacing of the frames.

Because their work there.

In some instances it actually has better performance than Windows.

Right.

The limiting factor is still sometimes it just simply doesn't work, but that has become a lot less the case than what it was, say, ten years ago.

It's not a fix for everybody.

There's still times you're gonna try and run a game and it's not gonna work, and that's gonna suck.

And how's the driver support?

For example, hit and miss?

So we're really early in this test in but.

As an example, I know, Intel recently laid off a bunch of their teams that maintains various Linux driversware.

Yeah, and so it's kind of you know, we don't really know what happens there.

Maybe the community picks it up, I guess, I hope so, but.

Yeah, he will, Yeah, yeah, it depends.

Also, it really feels bad to just be like, who's gonna take responsibility for this thing we need?

Yeah, and if it's even an open source driver to begin with.

So yeah, it's hit and miss, but I would say that the biggest limitation of my experience with Linux, and I'm not an expert in Linux.

There's no new people in your audience who.

Know they email me whenever I say alternative y wes.

Well, that's why we we better not even get into distributions of Linux.

Or oh no, they will.

They will be up my ass.

Arch by the way, But yeah, I think the.

I think.

I think the biggest you know, limiting factors is compatibility with things like daily applications.

So the tools we use for video editing generally just don't work on Linux.

We'd have to use something else.

Yeah, and that's a problem.

But well, adjacent to this Linux conversation, how are you feel about handheld gaming?

Handhelds are really cool.

I think there's faster innovation happening and handhelds than most other places.

Are there any really like?

Because I know a zeus because being on the Naughty List a bit.

But I like the steam Deck personally, But like, do you have at a favorite brand?

The steam Deck and the Ally are both pretty cool devices, despite the Ally's warranty issues, like it actually is a cool piece of hardware.

I thought the Lenovo Legion Go the original was a really unique and innovative gimmick.

And I don't use that word.

To like degrade the gimmick.

The gimmick was the controllers detached.

I like the switch.

Yeah, and then the steam deck is uh.

It was just kind of the first in the new round of handhelds.

You know, GPD existed before them and Ioneo and those guys.

I respect GPD.

They're weird, but they're trying something.

Yeah.

GPD and Ioneo both are weird but trying something.

Yeah.

I appreciate you don't have American manufacturers do it.

Actually it's good.

Are the American manufacturers trying weird shit like that or is it predominantly.

It depends like how you how you define American here because you know design, yes, like who depends on how you count Lenovo At this point, I don't know if you count them as American or not.

Right, but they're trying weird shit.

They are doing.

Weird stuff, and and they you know, they certainly have large US headquarter offices.

I don't know where their design happens.

It's probably they have a base I think office.

It's probably there.

But Valve is definitely the coolest in terms of they set the tempo for this to reignite, Like they're the ones who made handheld interesting again, and everyone else jumped in and started doing stuff and that's pretty cool.

And Valve also said, you know, we're gonna make Stemos available to other handheld manufacturers if they want to use it.

I don't know if there's a license or not, but like it's available.

And that's not being picked up.

I know you can kind of sideload it.

Yeah, you can definitely sideload it.

I think officially, I want to say Lenovo might have been the first one to actually offer it, right zeither Lenovo.

I don't think it was asues, but but yeah, someone's picked it up.

How do you feel about the Xbook's Rogue Ally.

I think there's a lot of confusion around it in the more mainstream audience.

I've noticed talment threads where people think it's going to be required to play what you would consider an Xbox game, But it's like basically a PC.

It's just a rogue x ally with Xbox branding.

Right basically yeh.

And I'm sure there's some software gifts, you know.

But I wonder if it works because that's not being I love my rogue ally, but the fucking software that pops up really gets in the way of gaming.

Yeah.

I don't really know what Microsoft is doing with Xbox.

It just seems like they're they're not sure what to do with that brand right now.

I have to I was gonna ask, like, what do you think Microsoft's deal with gaming is right now?

They seem almost like they don't want to do it.

It's weird because they they were so committed to locking people into the Xbox for like a generation or two, and then at some point my memory of it is they kind of realized, like, wait a minute, you know, as we moved to X eighty six architectures for consoles PC, gaming kind of works on both these devices, so we don't really care if they buy it on PC or on Xbox, as long as they use our device.

And they raise the price on game Pass as well.

Yeah, and and games oh.

Of course at the same time, and also the Xbox.

Yeah, and then you know, surprised the Pikachu face when they raised the price on games and then they raised the press on games Pass and then everybody cancels.

Well, they lost so much.

I read something they lost like one hundred million dollars or something even more because they put cool of duty on game Pass.

Yeah, I'm sure it was genies.

Fucking move lets it really.

It's a shame as well, because when you get past all the horrible menus, it is kind of cool that you can just plug a game.

I don't know, I've been playing PC games long enough that I was excited when you could just plug controller and it wasn't some sort of nightmare.

Yeah.

Yeah, though PS five controllers you still have to do the weird duel shock emulate a thing.

Yeah, it's gotten a lot more accessible, but I think the handholds are are pretty cool.

There's a lot of focus there.

I'm not sure when Valve is going to do it.

I really want them to bring Stemos to stop properly because it's not currently officially released for desktops, but they've done so much optimization work there where.

Like the coolest thing that gets probably the least coverage outside of our space is they've really tuned the.

Pacing of delivery of frames.

So if you have sixty fps, sixty frames per second and it's delivered an inconsistent interval, so you have a frame delivered in sixteen milliseconds and then the next frame is delivered in one hundred milliseconds and that repeats.

That's going to feel really bad.

Despite being sixty fps averaged over the period, you might have some that are four milliseconds, some that are sixteen, some that are one hundred.

We never thought that fps could be a marketing term, and now I finally, Oh Jesus, yeah.

And so like the work they've done to optimize for the frame delivery is great where they sometimes have better frame time pacing than Windows, and I would like to see that come to desktop.

So as we wrap up, what are you excited about?

What in teke in hardware and whatever is actually like kind of bringing your chair.

Yeah, I think on the DIY enthusiast side, there's still a lot of really cool innovation happening, especially in cases right now, believe it or not, like computer cases, you would think that it's like a pretty answered I mean it's it's all thermodynamics, which is well documented, right, It's not like stilicon.

Engineering, but they're still there.

I don't know.

There's just a lot of improvement in.

Getting an affordable, like good looking design that actually has a lot of function to it.

So over the last six or seven years they've really switched to focus on coin performance and then coin performance that still looks good and so that's it's exciting to see that.

And what does that edit?

Does it the cases get smaller?

Are they just they can?

Yeah, there's better thermal management.

Better thermals as a result of that, maybe lower noise.

The computer just looks cooler.

The smaller boxes have gotten a lot more viable.

So if you want to build something that you take from I don't know, like if there's a kid who travels between a college dorm and home in the summer, you know, having like a small a small mini it x box is pretty appealing, and those have gotten really good.

Yeah, the mani atxs are always so interesting to me.

I love the idea of kind of like an Apple TV sized one.

That's a pipe dream, but still.

It's not hard to do.

It's yeah, I mean, they've gotten easier.

But the other thing, I think coolers are also pretty exciting right now.

A lot of really neat technological development on the cool end products GPUs I think are probably the biggest hang ups for people where the pricing has just gotten kind of stupid for consumer market GPUs, and yeah, I think that that's the one that's kind of like kind of a bummer.

I guess, yeah.

And I mean, do you see any viable competitor to win video and am D at any point?

Do you think that there's any chance of any smaller competitor.

The only one is Intel, which I never really answered your question on ARC.

I think right now ARC is going to stick around.

But yeah, right now it only goes up to like two hundred and fifty dollars and after that it's all AMD and Nvidia and AMD.

You know, part of it's their fault.

They need to really want it and compete, and they just aren't.

Like the products are okay, but they keep doing the stupidest things with their prices and their marketing.

And I think part of it is they sell every epic CPU they make, so they allocate all the way for supply to that, and GPUs are kind of back burnered.

But you know, the end result is we just end up in this stalemate we've been in forever.

Now, what about.

Combined GPUs and CPUs, is that is that something you're seeing much growth from.

Do you think that that's going to be a focus or is that kind of just the.

CPUs basically, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean the the entire handheld.

Market is that.

Yeah, So there's a lot of success there and they're clearly good devices.

Now for that, they're not good enough for like high fidelity, high resolution, high graphics quality gaming on a desktop, but yeah, mobile devices, they're great for their faults Upscalers like DLSS and FSR do make it more viable to run an integrated graphics solution and actually have a decent experience.

Can't get close to a dedicated GPU, but they're good.

They're just they're in the same spot they've been in for fifteen years where it's you know, it's it's not really a replacement for one hundred dollars.

GPU is going to be better.

Probably probably doesn't make enough money as well from the sink a bunch of R and D into it either.

Or it becomes a problem of ballooning the die area because you have to allocate some amount of your silicon to the GPU and the CPU, and so if you give more to the GP to make more powerful, you're making your CPU weaker.

And the only really way to solve that is to put more silicon on the products, which is expensive.

So yeah, So a couple questions before we wrap up, who are your favorite creators at the moment, because you there's a there seems like a good kind of solidarity between them.

But who do you watch?

What do you I think historically, like going back, the large influences were Tech Report, Scott Wasson specifically, if I remember correctly, he was involved in the early days of ours Technico also early early days.

Oh oh sure, I'll have to look out.

And so Scott Wasson did a lot of excellent like test design work.

Ryan Shrout was part of his kind of era and the two of them with Tom Peterson from Intel now worked.

On frame time testing.

So so their publications set the framework for modern benchmarking with frame times and I that was you know, I still reference those content pieces and in tech I think as well respected but has been shut down by I think it was Future bought them.

Yeah yeah, I mean anyone who's worked the Future knows what happened, which is the Future bought them and then just didn't do shit with them.

Yeah, But who do you watch right now now?

For I like the work that.

Jared's Tech does on laptops, So he's an excellent laptop reviewer, does really good work there.

We've helped.

Just Josh Tech, who's another laptop reviewer, with some of his testing methodology, and I think they've been doing good things to really try to advance on that.

They're still like, relatively new to testing, but they're really trying.

I think Jay's two cents with his recent changes to testing, He's really kind of put in a lot of effort to overhaul it.

And then the hard run box guys are also awesome.

But yeah, it's there's there's I like, hesitate to start naming channels because there's a lot of channels you know that I like or we talk to at shows, and I hate to leave anyone.

Oh no, I know, I wasn't trying to single anyone else.

It's just I think that, especially in my own work, I could be quite critical.

So it's good to just focus on the things you actually like.

Yeah, so as we wrap, what's next for game is nextus?

What do you want to do next beyond testing?

Is there a virtually want to move into?

I know you've got the other channel.

Going, yeah, yeah, I have to go to the UK for that.

I'm sorry.

Recommendations from here leave okay, don't go where the airport is.

Yeah, yeah, I think that we.

Have some relatively large focus on that channel, which is like looking at some more consumer advocacy topics on the test inside.

Uh.

The biggest thing we're doing right now is overhauling our gaming benchmarks.

So we're working to introduce some new types of charts and metrics that don't exist right now in reviews, cold animation, error, and just trying to basically, we're taking a moment right now to try and find Yeah, Okay, we've been representing things a certain way in charge forever as a review community.

Is there anything new here we can do?

And that's kind of what we're trying to research.

So that's the immediate focus.

Well, Steve, it's been such a pleasure to come out here.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thanks, thank you for listening to Better Offline.

The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski.

You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O, s O W s ki dot com.

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