You know, all live stream- if just
someone wants to come here and we go to
Kanban, uh, together,
or, uh, Banchan?
Banchan.
I can't find enough.
That's a- that's a completely different
thing I'm not gonna get to.
But Banchan, uh, yeah.
All live stream that.
Do you want to get
some good fried chicken?
Hell yeah.
I mean, there's better- there's better
than Banchan, but yeah.
What if we name our company, you know,
Korean Fried Chicken
Incorporated, and then we deep
fake ourselves having Banchan or- or
Korean Fried Chicken
Incorporated chicken with what's
his name?
Jensen Wong.
Then we could artificially pump up our
stock prices, and he's
proven that it's okay to
do that.
So let's do it.
Mr. Adam Jensen Wong himself.
I wonder if it would work.
I don't want to incorporate.
Or no, incorporating is fine.
I don't want to, uh, go public.
We'll just say we went
public, and then don't.
We- yeah, we say we went public to pump
up our artificial public
price, and everything's-
nothing makes sense
anymore so that we can do that.
None of this is gonna
work unless we do a crypto.
We're gonna have to do
an off-the-console crypto.
Oh right, yes, okay.
We do a crypto- a publicly traded crypto.
Yeah, okay.
It's all coming together.
Okay, yeah.
I like this idea now.
At least it doesn't- it's
not gonna take a lot of work.
Welcome to
off-the-console, the most festive podcast.
It's all about Christmas gaming,
Christmas tech news, and
anything holidays related.
This week we're covering the biggest
news, including, uh,
Claire obscure being removed
for, uh, horrific AI usage.
And then we also have, uh, Nintendo's,
uh, Nitrogen, Nvidia
and Shittify's, everything
once more, and so much more.
My name is James, also the brink or games
revealed, however you
want to refer to me,
I guess.
And I am joined today with
Gardner and with Hi-Tech.
Thanks for being here, guys.
Wait, did you say Nintendo, Nitrogen?
Uh, yeah, I did.
Nvidia and Nitrogen, it's, you know,
people will come for it.
It's the same thing.
They're all the same
company at this point.
So yeah, I was
misreading two different titles.
So welcome, guys.
Welcome.
Let's get into what we've been doing this
week, what we've been playing.
Hi-Tech.
What have you been doing, Hi-Tech?
Arc readers.
You've been playing Arc Raiders.
Okay.
Yes.
So here's my thing
with extraction shooters.
A lot of people really don't like the
whole PVP aspect, but I live in it.
I revel in it.
I know plenty of people
that love the PVP aspect.
I hate it.
But like, here's my thing that people are
like yearning for like a
single player extraction
shooter, but like, I don't know if I
fully see the appeal in a
single player extraction
shooter, where there's no other players
that could vulture like
your gear, or in that case,
me being the vulture.
I just, yeah, I like to go in.
I mean, I like the
idea, I guess, how I do it.
I don't know how you do it from a non-PVP
standpoint of whoever
gets the boss or the
loot or whatever gets their first kind of
gets it or whoever can
like destroy the boss
first gets it.
It's hard though to get that without
having the PVP aspect of
taking out enemies that
are going for it too.
But I get tired of playing games where
I'm like, okay, if you
want to take me out because
you want to get the boss, once again,
I've only played one extraction shooter.
But I do get tired of people just going
around sniping people
just because they can snipe
and not actually do the objectives.
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of how a lot of
games are, truth be told.
Even games that are very, even like
clearly objective based
games like Overwatch, where
the objective is front and center.
And what you're supposed to do is on the
screen, it's hard to miss.
And people just go off and just kill
things because they can.
I do consider that a little different
because I mean, you're
just going to fail at that
point.
You're not going to succeed.
Maybe a high kill count, maybe.
And sometimes it's good to have some
people on your team that do that.
But an extraction shooter is, it's so
weird because
technically you're supposed to have
goals, you're then you're supposed to
extract with your loot you get.
And in a lot of them, they have
permadeath where your
character dies, then you have to
create a whole new character once again.
If your whole objective is to go in and
just kill people and
then extract, I don't know,
it's frustrating to me because I want to
be focused on the goal, not
killing people necessarily.
I don't know.
Sorry, yeah.
Hi, Tech.
Let's continue with the way.
I don't know, but that's
mostly what I've been doing.
The holidays is happening this week.
What's happened this week?
Good stuff.
What do you guys get
for Christmas though?
By the way, I should
probably share first.
Yeah, I got some clothes and I got a
board game called, I'm
trying to remember what
it's called.
But essentially what you do is you have a
grid that's full of like colors.
It looks like one of those Pantone, like
it looks almost like
one of those Pantone like
palette selector thingies.
And then you basically have to select a
specific shade of color.
And it was actually
pretty cool to play too.
Absolutely.
Hues and clues.
Hues and cues.
Oh, that's, oh man,
that game is so much fun.
Never played it.
I've never heard of that.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So basically you get more points, the
more accurate you are
with your guesses, but you
have to like, you have to play with other
people and they have to
like be able to describe
what color they're talking about without
telling you what color it actually is.
What if you're color blind?
That makes it difficult.
I don't know.
Don't know.
You definitely, okay.
I played hues and cues at my friend's
house, like for the first
time like four weeks ago
maybe.
And I am like, I have like some color
weirdness, not really
color blind, but I see a lot of
reds as pinks and pinks
as red, which is strange.
And a lot of like greens, it's hard for
me to distinguish between.
That's color blind.
I think that's a form of color blindness.
Yeah.
So I was like looking at, I was like
trying to describe like
a reddish color and I was
like cherry and everyone was about like
three or four columns to
the right where they should
have been.
And yeah, it was not, it was not correct.
Interesting.
Yeah.
But it's a fun game.
Yeah, it sounds really fun.
I'm not great with colors.
I don't think I have any color blind
stuff, but like I'm
just not great with colors.
But I wonder if in that kind of context,
if I would be a little bit better.
Oh well.
Yeah.
Gardner, what have you, what'd you get?
What have you been doing this week?
Yeah.
So this week, I mean, it was Christmas,
so I got a bunch of stuff.
I got a couple new books.
I'm really excited to read this, Legends
of Localization, Earthbound.
This is written by Clyde Mandolin, who's
the guy who like
translated Earthbound into
English.
Very excited to read that.
I have to finish the other book that I
got though, which is
Life After Cars, Freeing
Ourself from the
Tyranny of the Automobile.
And I'm bringing that up
because we just talked.
That explains the bonus episode now.
We just talked for at length about
infrastructure and cars
in the bonus episodes.
You guys should go
check that over on Patreon.
It's an extended episode
and it's a really good one.
And then I got to finish that book.
I'm going to review both of
these on the Bryant Review soon.
And then my brother-in-law, Ish, he's my
girlfriend's brother, he
bought me like $100 in Steam gift
cards.
So I redeemed that and I bought the
Coldplay DLC for Beat Saber.
And let me tell you, dude, I
unironically love Coldplay.
They are terrific.
And I know a lot of people are going to
be like, "Oh, guilty pleasure."
No, no, no, no.
I don't care.
I love Coldplay.
And this DLC pack is the best pack of
songs I've ever played on Beat Saber.
It's just so much fun.
My favorite is something just like this.
That's my favorite track on there.
So good.
Holy crap, dude.
I don't know if I've bought much or if
any of the packs on
Beat Saber, I play all the
stuff that I just released for free.
Is it remixed for Beat Saber or is it
just the exact song?
It's the exact song for these.
I haven't played a lot of other DLC
because I don't like
meta and I don't want to pay
meta, but I figure I have this in my
wallet, so whatever.
Is that a game?
Oh yeah, Beat Saber is
owned by meta, which sucks.
Yeah, when did that happen?
A little while ago, a
couple of years ago.
So I wrote a review, 1300 words of this
DLC pack and right at
the top I was like, "You
probably shouldn't buy this because it's
owned by meta and also
there's no telling what the
fuck they're using with our data."
Sorry, I swore.
Apologies.
"There's no telling what they're doing
with the data that they
collect of the headset
and your usage."
So your mileage may vary.
But I will say that something just like
this, Viva La Vida, A Sky
Full of Stars, Adventure
of a Lifetime, Clocks, Yellow, I mean
those are all, Speed of
Sound, they're all really,
really, really,
really, really fun to play.
All their classics it sounds like.
Yeah.
There's a few of the newer songs, which I
haven't even tried
because I don't really care
to try their new ones, but the classic
ones are really good.
And I don't know if you guys, have you
guys played Beat Saber recently?
No.
Within the last two years maybe?
Yeah, I've played a couple of months ago
when I set up my VR again.
Have you seen the new
mechanics that they've added?
There's a mechanic where there's a normal
block with a
direction, but then there's a
bunch of very tiny blocks that follow it.
Oh yeah.
And so you slice through all of them and
then they also have the...
They call them arcs.
And so it's like you slice through it and
then it's like it's
an arc that you follow
with your...
You trace the arc out in
3D space and it's so fun.
And this uses it very well.
That's good to know.
Yeah.
Maybe I should pick up a DLC or something
of like some newer
music that uses the new.
Yeah.
And do you use any custom songs?
There's like, there are some custom songs
that use them too and it's really good.
Maybe.
Sorry, I don't remember.
It's been a few months now.
Oh yeah.
But I love Beat Saber.
I honestly, one of the things I want is I
don't want to pay for a meta VR.
I want to get the Steamframe.
And so I can just play it wherever.
That's what I'm really wanting because
I'm getting tired of the...
My house is just not set up
very well for the valve index.
Yeah.
I want Valve to buy the Beat Saber crew.
I'm really sick of it
being owned by meta.
What if some enterprise and developer
just made Beat Saber slightly different?
I mean, you guys are down.
Let's do it together.
We'll call it Rhythm Sword.
Rhythm Sword.
I love it.
Instead of being like lightsabers,
instead you have like a physical sword.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I don't know if that would do as well.
Or what about like the Scott Pilgrim
Sword at the end of Scott
Pilgrim movie where it's
like pixelated.
Oh, like a pixelated Katana?
Yeah.
Oh, dude.
That'd be cool.
Yeah, what if we made a pixel art?
Because I have seen
some like VR pixel art.
Could be interesting.
Yeah, I'll tell you like the Beat Saber
environment that you're
in is like super awesome.
And like Coldplay came with a bunch of
extra stages that are
custom built for these songs.
So like Yellow is like...
It's like a black and yellow scheme.
It's really cool.
That sounds cool.
Yeah.
Beat Saber is awesome.
Yeah.
My favorite game right now.
It's also good because then it gets
people moving around.
It's really good for like getting some
little bit of cardio in,
getting a little bit of
movements.
It's...
I think VR has a really good
place for that type of stuff.
Yeah.
What I want in VR is leg inputs because
then they could make
like a martial arts game.
And I used to do martial
arts when I was growing up.
So that'd be a lot of fun.
That would be fun.
I'd love that.
My kids would die.
I would kick them in the face because
they'd be walking by.
I've already...
Or they would destroy the...
Me?
Yeah.
No.
What I've been doing this week is working
on my video game and
getting my vertical slice
ready for the demo next year.
Like I talked about in the bonus episode
of what I plan on doing next year.
And so I've been...
I've had some time off from work and so
I've been working on
that and spending time with
family.
And then like Christmas wise, I got a
couple of really cool things.
One of them was an Apple TV, which I will
say I'm stuck in the Apple verse.
It's just everything works.
I can easily use my AirPods to watch
stuff on the Apple TV
while let's say my wife is
sleeping and so it just makes...
I use the Apple fitness stuff.
I really like it a lot and I
use that with the Apple TV.
I really like it.
But the best thing I got was...
And the weirdest thing that
my wife got me was a bidet.
I got a bidet.
For your toilet?
I love it.
Bidets are awesome.
I've been holding off, but yeah.
Emily really wants a bidet.
You should get one, Gardiner.
You should get one.
Like we got the Tushy one, which is like
a popular brand that
does a really good job.
It's an...
It doesn't do...
You can get ones that do...
That will hook up warm water if your
toilets are near the sink.
You get electric ones
that will heat up the water.
I'm going on just full cold.
And honestly, I've used bidets before,
but it hasn't been that bad.
I thought the cold was going to be worse.
Nah, it's fine.
It's like a cup of coffee
before your cup of coffee.
So we had this discussion and I'm sorry
to interrupt, but like,
oh my God, she was talking
about how bad she wants a bidet.
I'm like, have you
ever tried a bidet before?
She's like, no, but I
think I would really like it.
And I'm like, I have tried a bidet.
And granted I didn't try an electric one.
I tried one that was just hooked up to
the cold water of like
that goes into the tank.
And I was like, you're
expecting a shower for your butt.
And that is not at all what you get.
It was just, I don't know.
It was during the winter
and it was in here in Maine.
And this was just like an abrasive cold
wetness that I did not appreciate.
So I've been resistant because we don't
have an outlet near the
toilet and we don't have
anything like we can't
hook up hot water to it.
I don't know.
I don't think it would work.
Why couldn't you hook up hot water?
I mean, even you own your house, you
could probably pass a
pipe or one of the hot water
hookup through the wall to your sink.
Because it can just hook up to your
sink's hot water too, if you want.
Yeah, the sink's on the opposite side of
the bathroom and so is the shower.
So it's like, it's like fully on the
other side of the room.
Yeah, you could figure out a way.
I could have my
friend Danny come help me.
Which would be easier trying to get like,
yeah, hot water to that
or just doing an electric
one?
Oh, yeah.
I wish that I could take the cold water.
Yeah, just take it.
Take the cold water, dude.
I mean, that's how I
would do it in the beginning.
But like, if I, so this is like, yeah, my
Tushy's like a starter today and I really
like it so far.
So I definitely recommend it to anyone.
Save a lot on toilet paper and then, you
know, just much more hygienic.
Yeah.
Dude.
Yeah.
Japan has some really nice bidetzo.
They do even at the hotels, like the
hotel I stayed at, like
it was very nice, but like
toilet.
Even at the Airbnb I was at.
I stayed in a few hotels in the Airbnb.
That was pretty nice.
There was also a, there was also a toilet
at the Airbnb that also had a, all right.
So when you flush the
toilet, it turns on the sink.
That's like literally right above it.
And like you wash your
hands in that toilet.
Yeah.
Which is crazy.
Yeah.
They have some weird stuff there.
Yeah.
I mean, they do
toilets right in Asia though.
Or the most like a
lot of Asian countries.
Yeah.
Where you can spray
off the whole bathroom.
They do, did I say toilets?
I meant bathroom.
Like the whole bathroom, you can spray it
out and it has a
drain right in the middle.
So you can just clean it really easy.
I feel like.
Um, and once you have kids, you realize
like, yeah, having a
way to spray out the whole
bathroom would be just amazing.
Uh, but yeah, no, great, great time.
Great, great week, Christmas week.
Curious, honestly, listeners and watchers
like what did you do
anything great or anything
fun this week?
Let us know in the comments below what
any good games you bought.
I mean, I got outer worlds too.
I bought that with some steam bucks.
Um, I plan on playing that probably in
the next week or two.
Like I'm really excited to play outer
worlds, even though it
didn't win game of the year.
I love outer worlds one.
So excited for that.
Yeah, I bought haste as well.
Um, at one, two
recommendation, uh, the first one haste.
Okay.
How was it?
Nice.
It's pretty good.
I like it.
Oh, I'm thinking Hades.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I know Hades.
Uh, not.
I was thinking Hades.
Yeah.
It's this cool.
Haste is cool.
I like it.
It's, it's like you, you have to, it,
what was that one game
where you have to like dive?
It's like a side scroll and you have to
like dive and like,
like, uh, amplify your, your
height based on like
the ground below you.
Anyway, it's like that, but
it's 3d and it's super fun.
It's really fast paced.
That was the demo I did when we were
doing demos almost a
year ago and I loved it.
Yeah.
Oh, was it you that recommended it?
It might've been you.
Yeah, but it's good.
Not what it was in an article.
I know I've recommended haste multiple
times and we've also,
yeah, we've talked about it
on the podcast.
That's what I remember.
But yeah, good stuff.
The, the thing.
Oh, haste would, the next version of
haste should be like a beat saber style.
That would be cool.
I wonder if you could do that.
Yeah.
It would make me sick as a
dog right off, like immediately.
What it, VR, VR, I can't do it.
Well, VR would be cool too, but I'm just
saying like, it'd be fun
to have it have beats that
you can kind of play it.
Yeah.
That would be.
Play around with.
Okay.
Sorry.
Okay.
Let's.
I cut someone off.
No, you can't.
Someone have anything else or should we
continue on with this?
Okay.
Yeah, I think it's time for us to
continue, go on with the show.
We haven't started
the actual podcast yet.
What are you talking about?
We've started the
actual podcast this time.
I'm with the topics.
People love to hear
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So before we get into it, make sure to
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Yeah.
So let's get into this week's topics and
I will have to say, I
don't like the first topic
we're going to be talking about.
It's really frustrating, but Claire
obscure 30 expedition, 33
disqualified from the indie
games awards for generative AI usage.
Yeah.
Hi, tech.
Were you the one that submitted this?
Do you want to go over this?
Yeah.
So essentially the indie game awards, no
relation to the game
awards is a separate award and
one of their rules was a disclosure of AI
usage and someone
from Sandrock apparently
told them that they didn't use gen AI at
all for the development of Claire obscure
and they, it turns out they did.
Yes.
It was, and yes, it was a placeholder
that even well, it's not enough.
It wasn't, it was in the final ship game,
but they patched out
really quickly when they
realized, but yeah, it was,
it was a poster on a pillar.
Well, I mean, and that was it.
The issue, the issue though, wasn't so
much the use of AI
because I'm sure they would
have given it had they been, had they had
someone at Sandrock told
them that they actually
like used it during development, but
there was no AI in the game itself.
Right.
But like they said they didn't use AI for
the development of the
game and implying that
there were no like AI placeholders, which
I mean is, that's basically the rule.
I think it's a, I'm just going to say, I
think it's a really stupid rule.
I really hate it.
I hate the gatekeeping
of it, but I get it also.
I get it.
Like if the whole game
was made by AI, I get it.
My problem is, is there's a lot more
tools that are going to
be introduced into gaming
platform, like game development platforms
that you're just not going to be able to,
they're just going to kind of have
generative or maybe AI,
maybe not generative AI, but
like AI.
So in place of clarity, the winner of the
indie game awards was blueprints.
That's awesome.
I love blueprints.
I definitely, like for the indie game
awards kind of thing, I do
like, I'm glad that Expedition
33 didn't quite win that because I do
think that type of awards
is just a different kind
of system that they have.
It is nice to have a home for like, like
truly like small game
studios, but I'm just
mad that they disqualified it.
And I'm wondering if
they disqualified it.
I wonder if they wanted to
find a way to disqualify it too.
Cause I know there's a lot of people that
were not happy that this was mentioned to
be an indie title and I don't know.
I just feel like it shouldn't have been
disqualified personally.
Here's the thing.
I know people are like, oh yeah, AI, it
saves a lot of time and
lets us like ideate and
whatever.
But like as someone who like makes
videos, if you take
like, let's say that I make a
movie and I put in temp
audio, it can be whatever.
It could be like a license track that I
don't have the license
to, or it could be just some
kind of stock audio, whatever.
You put that in there and then it
becomes, that's what you become used to.
And then it becomes much more difficult
to actually replace it
later when you're cutting
to the music, you know, you're cutting
for that specific thing.
And then when you go to take that and
give it to an artist to
say, here, this is what
I put in as temporary audio.
I want you to basically just do this.
It becomes much harder for the
artist to express themselves.
And I just find like the whole concept of
like temporary art,
you know, if you're not
making it yourself, I just find it to be
specious, like a specious use case.
I don't know.
I just don't see, I don't get it.
I don't know why.
So the art in Expedition 33 is very
unique and it is not, in my
opinion, heavily influenced
by AI.
So I don't know how much of their, like,
the art isn't, it was
maybe influenced by AI,
but the placeholders that they used were
posters on a pillar that was left in.
I'm sure they had AI art in other places,
but like their creative
director did a really,
or their creative director and their
like, their artists and
stuff like that did a really
good job of flushing out
something that is very unique.
So I don't know.
I think it really depends on the person,
the studio, maybe even
like whether or not how
heavily stuff will get influenced by AI,
but we're, we already
take inspirations as
an artist.
Most artists will take
inspirations from past art.
That's how creative works have worked for
generations, for millennia almost.
It's where we build on that.
And so I don't know.
I'm having, I have a hard time because I
both agree with you,
Gardner, because I do think
it could end up hurting the creative
process or it could
really, maybe it could help.
For me, I can say from personal
experience, I do use
generative AI for some placeholder
stuff.
I do not like it, but it is better than
just having like a black
box there or, you know,
like some really stupid piece.
So I do use some generative, but I'm
ready to replace it.
I will say that.
Yeah.
I mean, it was super tempting for me when
I was like doing some of the art for, for
chess mess specifically.
Like I was like, I'm not like super, I
don't feel like I'm a
really good like artist in
the way that I want
this to look in my head.
And it was like super tempting for me to
just be like, hey, AI
make, you know, tapestry,
like make it look, make like chess pieces
attacking each other in
like a medieval tapestry
style.
But I didn't do that.
Instead I went and like looked at
medieval tapestries and
then took some of the existing
art I had and threw it into Inkscape.
And then I tried to like degrade it in
Photoshop or not
Photoshop, but Gimp afterwards.
And I don't know, it looks okay.
I'm not a great artist though.
Yeah.
I mean, if I, that's the also the part
with this like game I'm making.
If the vertical slice in the demo I make
is good enough to get
like funding for it, then
I want to, at the end of the day, I'd
love to hire an artist right now.
I'd love to work with like a really good
3D artist or, and or concept artists.
Like usually they're two separate people
because they're
drastically different ways of, of
coming up with the art, like the 3D
artists, the textures and
the concept art are all very,
take their own unique skills.
I'd love to hire people.
It just, it costs money
that I just do not have, right?
And so I'd work with
someone on a personal stand.
I just don't feel, I
feel like, I don't know.
I don't know of anyone that's like,
that's a good enough
artist to do that too.
So having AI and maybe that's going to be
my crux in the end is
like, I'm going to rely
too much on AI for this, but we'll find
out, I guess in 2026.
So I don't like, I'm just going to say, I
think they patched it out.
I think it was a mistake.
I think the game grew much bigger than
they were expecting,
much quicker than they were
expecting.
Like they started out
smaller and then they grew.
I think a lot of mistakes and a lot of
stuff falls through.
So even the person that said, yeah, we
didn't use generative AI
or something like that,
or maybe they said we didn't use AI, who
knows what they knew?
I think there's a lot of nuance to this
type of stuff, a lot of
mistakes, but at the same
time, hopefully they don't turn into a
big corporation that
just lies about stuff.
So I get, I think it would have been nice
to like give them some
leniency on this type
of thing.
Well, the bed's neat already and they
certainly made an
example out of Expedition 33.
Yeah, the bed's been made and that's why
I'm making my comments.
I think they're wrong
and I think it's boring.
They did.
That's just my opinion.
So they made the decision.
I think it was completely wrong.
I wish that, I hope that they can come up
with some better
rules in the future, more
leniency, but at the same time, I think
if this would have
happened with a game that
was more like smaller where they just
don't have as much
defense, because the Expedition's
like at the end of the day,
this doesn't matter for them.
Like they're going to make, they've
already made their money.
They've made so much money.
The game awards already been awarded to
them, like the big game award.
But we're going to see a lot more, I
think really good indie
games come out that have
used some AI.
I know that they need to disclose it, but
like it will soon not
be a thing to disclose
it, I think, or it's going
to be hard to disclose it.
About those indie games, do you think
they'll show up on my
cloud gaming service of choice
GeForce Now?
Yeah.
So for those who don't know, GeForce Now,
service Nvidia runs
our favorite company of
the year.
Nvidia runs GeForce Now.
Essentially, you get to
play games through the cloud.
And I mean, truth be told, the service is
actually pretty
decent, but there's always
something about cloud gaming
that never feels quite right.
It would probably work better in a
country with good internet
and is a lot smaller, like
Japan.
But in the US, it's just never, it's
never going to work.
Like if I don't have a data center in my
state, it doesn't
really, it's not going to work
as well, of course.
I mean, data centers
are everywhere now, right?
Are there going to be a lot of little
data centers around or are
there going to be multiple
big data centers in like big towns?
What's the distance?
Because I'm in Utah and I've tried it and
it worked fine for me for the most part.
I think there's always going to be some
latency, even if you're
right next to the data center,
but I don't know.
Let's see what Nvidia says.
There's the closest, oh, there is one in
close to my neck of the woods.
Interesting.
But again, not everyone's going to have
access to decent
internet and living close to an
Nvidia data center.
And so, especially like people out in
like the Midwest where
internet speeds aren't great
and data centers are kind
of not great either there.
Agreed.
No, I, yeah.
Yeah, but that's not why
we're talking about this topic.
We're talking about-
No, it's not.
I think it's fine to have like a game
streaming service like this.
I think it's good to have choices.
I think that's how our economy is
supposed to work, but
yeah, what if this is your only
real choice because more and more
competitors are getting shut
down and then they implement
what are they implementing?
A time limit, 100 hours a month and you
can pay more for more time.
And supposedly it's more economical to
have two subscriptions
to GeForce Now rather than
pay for 15 hour blocks,
which is insane to me.
This is-
10 hours is a lot of time.
Yeah, it starts at 100 hours and then
next year it'll be 90
hours and then next year
it'll be 80 hours and then the next year
it'll be 70 hours and
people will complain about
it.
Yeah, but 70 hours covers 95% of all
players on our thing and
then it will be 60 and then
it will be 50.
This is how they work.
This is what they do.
It's how they get you.
It's my thing too is that cloud gaming in
and of itself isn't a bad concept.
It's just that when Nvidia wants to go
all in with AI and
cloud streaming, it really
begs the question of if they even want to
sell hardware to
gamers anymore instead of
just having everything run through them.
Because I bet you it's going to make a
lot more if they just
rented out their GPS instead
of selling them.
Yeah, I'm kind of curious if that's true.
Really want to know.
I don't know if these game streaming
services actually make that much money.
That's why Google stopped.
GeForce Now, they've changed their
pricing plan multiple times.
I think they used to have per hour usage
and then maybe they still do.
But 100 hours monthly time and they have
to pay extra is not
horrible, but you're not
wrong, Gardiner.
Are they going to decrease that?
Are they going to...
I don't know.
I don't like the idea of tying my gaming
to a service that
could be changed six months
down the road.
I've already tied my domains to a company
that screwed me over.
I don't want to necessarily have my
leisure time tied to that.
I get it.
A lot of gamers don't play 100 hours of
gaming in a month, but I
don't like the idea of having
a time limit on
something I pay for monthly.
I don't either.
I also don't like the idea that if you
pay for 100 dollars and
you don't use them, then
you just lose them.
Yeah.
I think it's just a limit.
I don't think you're
paying for 100 hours.
You can only play up to 100 hours.
That's how you'd have to see it or else
it would be a rollover.
I mean, truth be told, if you're a gamer
that plays over 100
hours, you should just
buy a gamer PC.
I mean, that's probably
what they're thinking.
Yeah.
That is assuming their master plan isn't
to rob the world of
affordable home computing.
That's their plan.
Make no mistake.
That's everything.
I mean, I will admit it does sound very
conspiratorial because, I mean, there's
no evidence to suggest
that besides
everything going up in price.
But as a company, they're going to
benefit more and more as
more things are displaced
into data centers.
And so they're going to want that.
And unless you had a healthy government
to help limit some of this with some.
With some limitations and some laws, it's
just going to keep on going.
And I don't know.
It's Nvidia.
I mean, Nvidia just they very much feel
like a country or a
company out of control at this
point.
Yeah.
I highly doubt what's his face.
The CEO even.
Jensen Wong.
Yeah.
Even has any real control over the
direction of the company at this point.
Dude, when when Jensen Wong goes out for
fried chicken, Korean chicken.
And that company that he goes to isn't
even on the isn't even
publicly traded, but other
freaking publicly traded Korean chicken
franchises have their price bump.
That's called insanity, dude.
Like you're right.
It's completely out of control.
It's like this is a this is a freight
train that's about to
go off the rails, man.
Do you think our net worth would go up
like a billion dollars
if we had Jensen Wong on
the podcast?
Yes, we would.
Yes, there would be companies
trying to buy heavy element.
No.
OK.
New 2026 goals for the podcast.
Get get get some guests like Jensen Wong.
What we should do, what we should do is
we should get, you know,
off the console publicly
traded and we should call it
Korean fried chicken podcast.
Oh, my gosh.
And video court.
And then one day and then one day we
actually review Korean
fried chicken on the podcast
and just make the
entire episode about that.
Yeah, like we've
already talked about eating.
We should ask Bill.
Oh, Bill was on that.
Bill was on that episode.
We should see if he's
actually tried it since then.
Oh, that's true.
I'll tell you what.
Bonchon is awesome if
you haven't had Bonchon.
They used to have a Bonchon.
They used to have a Bonchon near me, but
then they closed that
down and it's now a Mexican
restaurant.
Yeah, there's a Bonchon a little further
down, but I don't want I
don't feel like driving
30 minutes to get to Bonchon.
Maybe if we had good public transit,
we'll take a picture of
the next time I walked up
on because it's literally I can walk to
it in like two minutes.
Do an IRL stream of you walking from your
office to your local Bonchon.
I don't think I'm going to do that.
I'm not going to
reveal exactly where I live.
True that.
Yeah.
Speaking of NVIDIA's insanity, did you
see that new NVIDIA nitrogen AI?
No.
I thought it was Nintendo's nitrogen.
Yeah, I thought.
I thought you thought that too.
Exactly what it sounds like.
It's NVIDIA researchers creating AI that
plays video games for you.
Oh, dude, I predicted basically this in
the in the bonus episode.
We did like 2026 predictions.
So it's it's just what I wanted in a
highly interactive medium.
The dude the game playing itself for me.
I may as well just skip the middle man
and like stop buying
computer hardware altogether
and just watch a let's play on my phone.
Yeah, so like some people don't mind
watching games be played
through without any commentary.
There's a few streamers that do that, but
for the most part, I agree.
I think people come for a personality,
come for opinions,
come for companionship.
And if it's a void box, then I just
a.k.a. an AI, I just it's
not going to be entertaining.
The difference between that and like what
like watching someone
play is that you know
someone's actually playing the game.
Like if it's like a speed run or like
maybe just high level
gameplay with no commentary,
you know something.
But the difference is this is AI running
and presumably playing the games locally.
It's like why even bother
playing games at this point?
Like I think this is meant to be for fun.
I don't know if we should like fully get
into too much because I
don't think this is going
to destroy any type of markets.
I I do think research
wise, I think it's fascinating.
So I'm open source foundation model
designed to play a thousand plus games.
So it's open source in case any of you
guys wanted to program
your own bot that can play
video games.
Well, that's another
interesting thing, too.
But especially in games like MMOs.
Where you have gold farmers.
Mm hmm.
Oh yeah, I can definitely be.
Yeah, that's that was the first thing I
thought was like this is
just going to make cheating
in online games a lot
easier and much harder to detect.
Well, I mean, I think it's a bad idea.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's been a while now had
some type of AI that
are specifically geared
towards online games.
But so I'm curious if this
would even be able to do that.
Well, I wonder how good the
precision is and all that.
So there's a YouTuber
called Basically Homeless.
He used to be a Rainbow Six YouTuber.
But then he's gone hard into basically
creating physical aim bots.
He has like one of his videos is
neuromuscular cyborg aim assist.
Where he has a bunch of wires attached to
his arm and it helps him it helps him aim
better somehow.
I haven't watched the video yet.
I watched another video where he has he
basically has an
exoskeleton aim for him and it jerks
his arm around to like click on heads.
That way you're not technically cheating
by running software.
You're technically cheating by having
physical augments for your body.
I think it's cool if you're doing it not
to compete and you're
just having fun with it.
But yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
He's doing it for fun, of course.
Yeah.
But some people would certainly do that
to actually like have a
real advantage over our
weekly flesh and body.
You know, I don't know if
I'm too worried at this point.
That seems like a lot harder than just
buying a cheat online
and implementing it.
Interesting.
They're like edge cases.
A lot of the stuff is edge cases and they
don't concern me as much.
Like I think the
research in this is fascinating.
I like it for research.
I'm a big proponent of research.
Implications of what
this will mean for cheating.
I don't know.
I think this will be a framework for
creating more hacks.
But right now I'm not too concerned.
I think we're just getting to a point
where like online games.
I mean, if this enables cheating, right,
I just feel like this
is kind of like end game
cheating and it's just going to make
online games unsustainable.
Like because if you're not cheating, then
you're then you're
not going to be able to
even play because
everyone's going to be cheating.
Right.
That's the thing that I don't really find
the pleasure in cheating.
Like a long time ago, a long time ago,
back when Citi used to be
very popular on iPhones,
basically my brother and I on his phone,
we downloaded a mobile
game and had in-app purchases.
You can buy turrets and stuff.
It was a tower defense game.
And we hacked it so that we could get
free in-app purchases.
So we got all the
strongest shit immediately.
The stuff you're supposed to pay for.
You're grind for.
And then the game was not
wasn't very fun anymore.
So I don't understand
how cheaters brains work.
Yeah, I mean, it's one thing if it's like
an online competitive
game, like I feel like
the people who cheat either want to spoil
everyone else's time and take pleasure in
that.
Yeah.
I think that's
probably what it comes from.
But like, but for me, like there are
times where I'm, you know,
I've I want to play spelunky,
but I don't want to like, I want to like
play a very specific version of spelunky
where I have the the crazy alien gun and
the jetpack and then
I'll turn on like a trainer
and just play that way,
which is fun in its own way.
It's super chaotic.
I mean, that I mean, I don't mind.
I've modded games before
to like single player mods.
I don't care about it.
Yeah.
Single player games.
I don't really care.
It's online games, like specifically.
And I think, Gardner,
I think you're correct.
So like cheaters are there's two types of
cheaters, I think one that wants to spoil
it for everyone.
They get a they get a kick out of
everyone else's life,
whether it be they're emotionally
damaged or whatnot.
And then I think there's also people that
just like, they have
to win so bad that they
trick themselves into like, well, I'm
sure everyone else is cheating.
So I'm going to cheat.
And then there's
essentially those two types.
And some and like I've
read some like cheater forums.
And some believe some cheaters believe
that no one would play
the a no one will play the
game without them or be oh, I feel myself
improving as I use this cheat.
Yeah, no, it's like
some level of delusion.
Honestly, I think if we had
a I just sounds really off.
But if you had a hot take right now, if
you had a healthier
government and we tracked
these cheaters, I think
we'd get them mental health.
I think they would almost have been like
mandatory like, hey, we
can't trust you with a gun or
anything or anything else in life.
I tell you get some mental health because
that's some delusional shit right there.
Like you're you're delusional.
And so you need help.
Jensen Wong.
He probably needs that therapy to make
him not a narcissist.
I'm sure I think Jensen Wong
just needs some fried chicken.
You know, all live stream if Jensen Wong
wants to come here and
we go to Kanban together.
Banchan?
Banchan Kanban.
That's a that's a completely different
thing I'm not gonna get to the banchan.
Yeah, I'll live stream that.
Do you get some good fried chicken?
Hell yeah.
I mean, there's better.
There's better than banchan.
But yeah, yeah.
But what if we what if we name our
company, you know, Korean
Fried Chicken Incorporated,
and then we deep fake ourselves having
banchan or Korean Fried Chicken
Incorporated chicken
with what's his name?
Jensen Wong.
And then we could
artificially pump up our stock prices.
And he's proven that it's OK to do that.
So let's do it.
It's how you make our buck, you know, Mr.
Adam Jepson Wong himself.
I wonder if it work.
Yeah, I don't know.
We did we we predicted what 2026 is going
to be like in our bonus show.
And that's I'm changing
my prediction to that now.
That's that's how we win.
That's how we make our bag.
I don't want to incorporate or no, no,
incorporating is fine.
I don't want to go public.
We'll just say we went
public and then don't.
We.
Yeah, we say we went public to pump up
our artificial public
price and nothing makes sense
anymore so that we can do that.
None of this is going to
work unless we do a crypto.
We're going to have to do
an off the console crypto.
Oh, right.
Yes.
OK.
We do a crypto, a publicly traded crypto.
Yeah.
OK.
It's all coming together.
OK.
Yeah.
I like this idea now.
I think it's not going
to take a lot of work.
Right.
Becoming publicly traded
is very difficult, guys.
So, uh, yeah.
Uh, you know, those are difficult.
Killing the Xbox brand.
That's difficult.
Not for Microsoft.
It's easy.
They're they're on easy mode.
When you're a man, when you're a company
as big as Microsoft,
doing stuff like this
is as easy as it gets.
Yeah.
So, here's my question, though.
What happens when Microsoft dies?
Because when Sega, not Microsoft, because
remember, when Sega
exited the market, Microsoft
was just there getting ready.
Technically that
generation had four consoles.
Who's going to take Xbox's place?
Because I don't think we
really have a real competitor.
Steam machine.
That helped.
Yeah.
Oh, dude.
I, I honestly, I don't
believe in the Xbox is dead thing.
I think they're morphing into something
else that I think is
like they're going to get
a new market.
They're going to get new people to join.
I think they're going to lose a lot of
the older gamers, but I
think they're fine with
that.
I think they're just all
about these like weird plays.
I don't think Xbox is, in my opinion, I
don't, I think I'm
convinced now that they're not
dying.
That pivot is killing the market for what
a lot of people want an Xbox for.
So what if their market was to kill the
console market altogether?
They I think their pivot is they don't
see the console market
lasting past 10 more years.
I think the next generation is going to
be the last generation
is what they're thinking.
That's why they're jumping ship.
Personally, that's what I think.
What would happen to Nintendo though?
Because Nintendo is almost all video
games, more specific consoles.
Whereas Sony, even Sony's released games
on PC now and Sony's a
multi-billion dollar company
that does more than
video games, of course.
But Nintendo?
I think Nintendo's almost
failed multiple times in the past.
So I think they're full of themselves.
I think they could still
potentially fail at this point.
The Switch 2 was, I was worried that the
Switch 2 was going to be
sold out this holidays.
It's not.
A lot of places still
have plenty of Switch 2's.
So I don't know if Nintendo is going to
do as well with Switch 2 as the Switch 1.
Heck, I even think the
PS5 outsold the Switch 2.
Switch 2 did really well numbers.
It did much better than the Steam Deck.
You know, even at this point, it sold
more than what the Steam
Deck sold all its life.
But, you know, they plan to sell a lot.
And if they don't sell enough and with
how much more stock
that they have, then they
could hurt a lot of stuff.
So we'll see.
10 years from now, we'll see if
Nintendo's still going to
be able to be in the purely
console industry or if they're going to
have to start releasing
games for PC or other platforms.
A little time will only tell.
I think they're pretty stubborn.
So I think they would
almost just die at this point.
They'd go back to making
what are those Hanafuda cards?
Yeah.
I think they'd go back to
doing just toys or something.
But no, they're not like a cockroach like
Xbox where they're
going to survive no matter
what.
Yeah, I feel like, dude, OK, so if
Microsoft just exits the
console market, what if Sega
came back and made a
Sega branded steam machine?
A Sega branded steam machine?
Yeah.
The Dreamcast 2?
Ooh.
I think the part of Sega that the people
that made the Dreamcast
were bought or essentially
hired by Xbox.
Right.
So were they?
I think so.
I could be wrong about that, but I swear
I resummed it on a lot
too long ago that like
a lot of the people that made the
Dreamcast went over to
Xbox and made the Xbox.
I could be wrong, though.
I wonder where they are now, though.
Are they going to go back to Sega now
that they're probably
retired or, you know, yeah,
a hundred years old and
then a retirement home.
I'm just kidding.
But the Dreamcast came out in 1999.
Like, yeah.
The Sega, I think Sega
making hardware is over, guys.
I'm sorry.
You got to boo boo every
good idea that I ever have.
I'm sorry.
It would be really it would be cool for
them to do a Sega branded
X-Box or a steam machine.
Streamcast.
The Streamcast.
It's all about streaming.
Yeah.
That would be the
Steamcast, not the Streamcast.
Steamcast.
Okay.
Steamcast.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I think that would be cool.
But, you know, if it comes down to it, I
just want first party hardware.
I don't really care.
Sega made a steam machine.
If Sega made it, yeah, I agree.
Like at the end of the
day, that was the thing.
I think that's why I'm like, I don't know
if I care about Xbox,
like Xbox and Microsoft's
play so much.
Like, I think they have so many studios,
so much IP if they I
mean, if they can actually
start making sure that more and more
stuff comes out, which I
think they I think this
last year was a fairly good year for
them, even though I know
I've read so many mixed
articles on this.
Like some people, like it's the worst
year they've had others
like, no, like they've
sold more or they've had more people play
games than they've ever had.
It's I'm fatigued at
this point on this battle.
I think they're going to do just fine.
I don't think they're
going to die anytime soon.
I think they have too much IP.
I think they've set themselves up.
But I do think the Xbox brand as it is,
is pretty much dead.
It's not a console anymore.
So is Xbox dead?
No, Xbox as a brand is not dead.
Xbox as a as a console is dead.
I think just like I
would put it that way.
I don't know.
I feel like they can
have all the IP they want.
They're not making games like they have.
They've canceled more games about making
the games that are
literally making a Halo remake.
They've made more games than any other
company, I think in
twenty twenty six or five.
I mean, yeah, but like, I
mean, Indiana Jones, right.
They made the Dark Ages.
Oh, was it?
Yeah.
But I mean, doing the
Dark Ages was not good.
Like it was very.
That's a hot take.
It's a little bit.
It's definitely divisive.
I liked it.
I ended up beating it.
I ended up liking it, but it was not as
good as Doom Eternal.
No, I don't know.
And they cancel.
They've canceled a
shitload of games, too.
Like I just don't know, man.
I just don't see it.
I think Microsoft's incapable of doing
good things anymore.
Windows.
I mean, on the way.
So studios, people are starting to have
more and more windows for the best.
Small fiction is an EA game, isn't it?
It's not.
Yes, EA and Xbox.
Yeah.
Then this article is like broken.
This must be just Xbox or games that are
on the Xbox Game Pass because.
Well, you look at.
I'm not showing it right
now because I don't trust it.
It's from games.
OK, sorry, I'm trying to look up games
that came out this year.
That were Xbox.
And I'm yeah, I guess if you anything
that's on Game Pass, if
you want to put that, but
that's not true.
Like Expedition 33 is not.
An Xbox studio.
It's.
It's I found the same article you're
looking at the game spot one.
Yes, garbage.
Games, but if you want
to put it up garbage.
Yeah, if you want to put it like in those
types of like they had
some of the best games
on their game pass, that being said,
studio wise, yeah, we'd have to go.
I'd have to dig down and see what
actually they released,
like a vowed didn't do well.
Yeah, we could do that.
Maybe some other time in a bonus episode.
I think it'd take too much time here, but
we are taking a lot of time to be honest.
I think Xbox is going to be fine, but I
think the next few years
are going to be the tell
for it.
So I could definitely be wrong on that.
Well, I'm more curious
about our our good friend EA.
Owners of Dead Space
and Command and Conquer.
Hmm.
Yeah, and your co-host.
No.
What's that?
I said, hi, tech, you
know your your co-hosts well.
Yes.
So 99 percent of all EA shareholders
voted in favor of the
Saudi Arabian buyout.
Fifty five billion dollars.
I think we're cooked on that one.
I think 99 is pretty high.
I'd expect much more
like maybe 80 percent.
I expected some resistance.
Yeah.
But almost none, almost none, literally.
But it's got all their stock.
I should have bought stock.
No, I should have bought
stock earlier this year.
No, any A, but no, it's going to bump
their stock up by 25 percent.
So I see why.
But I was expecting like
some of these guys to be.
Well, it's Saudi led, so
maybe I won't like it can't be.
Yeah, the whole thing was
that they were going private.
Yeah.
Oh, that's true.
So they get bought out.
Yeah, buyout with 25
percent is really good, guys.
Like they're just going to.
Yeah, their stock is getting bought out.
Yeah, I forgot.
Yeah, that they're going private.
Yeah.
Damn.
I mean, interesting.
I mean, on the actual on the actual
gaming side of things,
there's nothing newsworthy.
But on the business side
of things, it's a huge deal.
I mean, for sure.
They're going to be.
This will affect the games.
It will affect the games.
It hasn't just yet.
That's what next year is going to be for.
We probably should have
made a prediction about EA.
Will bring back dead space
and or command and conquer.
That is such an interesting thing because
being publicly owned, I
don't think they would
have been privately owned.
And depending on if the Saudi prince
likes dead space or
command and conquer, it could
bring it back.
There's when you get privately owned, you
can have a lot more stakeholders that are
that want something that's not fully
based off of price or profit.
So well, I mean, a game like CNC is
uniquely poised to be
something that's not fully based
some kind of like
propaganda to some degree.
Right.
I mean, command and conquer, if you set
it in the red alert or
even the general's universe.
Right.
Like, yeah, you could then make Saudi
Arabia look really nice.
You know, they could be
part of the good guys.
You know, like there's a lot that that
they could use that for.
They might see value in that.
And if they make a good CNC game and it's
also like just even just
a little bit propaganda.
You know, that has the potential to make
money and whitewash their
or sports wash or whatever
the equivalent would be with games.
Well, it could be worse.
We could live in a world where North
Korea bought EA instead.
I mean, North Korea doesn't have any type
of funds to do that.
No, but they have the nukes and the
ability to kidnap people.
Not really.
They kind of do.
Kind of.
I'm not I'm not that worried about North
Korea, but I just
thought it'd be interesting.
But sorry.
No, sorry.
Sorry.
I don't know.
It's it's kind of a crazy thing for a
whole country to own a
company as a gaming company.
A company as big as EA.
Yeah.
Like, I don't think we've ever seen
anything like this before, right?
I mean, I guess you could say Tencent
works with the Chinese
government to a degree.
Yeah, they're not fully they're not
really owned, but they
have to adhere to a lot of
the laws and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah.
It is different.
This is you can think of it as a company
having a start the stock
portfolio or like a private
investment firm having.
And like this is for the country.
It's not like the
individuals of the country benefit.
This is a fund that they have to help
grow the country itself
diversify and then also
promote the country in
some way or form or fashion.
They know oil is not
going to last forever.
And they're actually doing something
about it, which is smart.
Unfortunately, some of our other
countries, like the one I
might live in, doesn't really
understand that oil is not going to last
forever and you have to diversify.
Even though the oil companies do
diversify too, but yeah.
Yeah.
So I don't know if it's going to change a
whole lot for the next few years.
I bet you they function just the same.
Maybe they'll try, maybe they'll be
convinced to sell some of their IP.
I'm hoping the Dead Space IP gets sold to
a smaller studio or
publisher that wants to
make more Dead Space
because it would make money.
If they could sell it at a reasonable
cost, like, hey, I don't
know, $10 million, sell
it off and then the next company that
makes or the next dev
studio that makes it, they
can easily make a game
that would pay for all that.
Command and Conquer, I think is another
one where I think if
we had a game that came
out, Command and Conquer come out, like a
real true new Command and Conquer, that's
a smaller studio could
easily not be in the negative.
It'd be in the positive.
It's just companies are too used to
wanting to 10X everything
that if it does a 10X, even
if it makes them 4X, they consider that a
loss, which is crazy.
When they could just put, like, stop
firing people, put some of
the other people on there.
I don't know.
I could go into this whole thing.
I think we could definitely fix it if we
weren't so much chasing the 10X dollar.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't, at the end of the day, I
don't like that Saudi Arabia owns it, but
I'm also very curious as to like, to see
how this does as a
company now and if it gets
restructured and everything.
Oh, and we should clarify, of course, you
know, always a disclaimer.
We're not against the Saudi people.
It's mostly just the government that, you
know, I take some, have some issue with.
Yeah.
Because we always get, because we do get
comments sometimes about that.
We probably should have started the topic
with that, but, you know, it's too late.
I guess.
I don't know.
I mean, it's kind of obvious.
Like, I've said stuff
about the United States too.
I'm criticized.
I just, and we're getting
pretty close to that here too.
I criticize it heavily.
When you kill a reporter, like news kind
of stuff, that is one of the worst things
you can do because a free press is the
most important thing.
And if you make them afraid, it's really,
that ends, that ends in authoritarianism,
no matter what.
So they haven't had any
ramifications from it.
No payback.
And like nothing,
nothing has come from it.
So yeah, that is the problem.
I'm not going to say it's with the people
or anything else, but
yes, unaccounted murder
stuff.
Okay.
We can move on to the next thing.
So Facebook deploys the Steam Deck's
Linux scheduler across its data centers.
Valve's low latency scheduler, perfect
for managing metas and
workloads at massive data
centers.
I did not even, this,
this was on the 23rd.
So it happened a few days
ago, but I was not aware of this.
Yes.
So it turns out the scheduler made for
lower end hardware, you
know, to have them not
drop frames.
It turns out that's also
good for high end hardware too.
It's proof that optimization benefits
everyone, not just people at the low end.
Oh yeah.
When you're managing massive amounts of
things that need to be
scheduled, yeah, it's going
to help with overhead.
Pull up the thumbnail for that article.
That's ludicrous.
What this?
Yeah, that.
Meta, meta Steam Deck.
Dude, I should give, I can make a better
thumbnail than that.
That thing is not cropped well.
No, not at all.
Yeah.
It's like a trapezoid.
Yeah.
They could have, I think AI did it.
No, I think AI would have done, would
have made something entirely different.
I'm not so.
Dude, so the story here is actually
really interesting
because the Linux scheduler is
usually pretty optimized, but what was
developed here for the
Steam Deck is like designed to
prevent like dropped frames, right?
It's like super optimized.
And at the scale that meta operates with
their servers, like
any kind of like weird
bottlenecks, if you can avoid it, it ends
up saving a ton of electricity.
So like this is actually crazy.
And it's also very interesting that this
is yet another example
of meta profiting from
Valve, like Valve work.
Because like Valve actually
was deeply invested in Oculus.
Like they, Valve was like very much on
board and helping
Oculus develop some VR tech.
And then meta swooped in and bought that
from, you know, right
off from underneath them.
So interesting.
Interesting.
No, don't bring that back up.
I remember when that happened.
That was.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Man, there's such a freaking
liege on society sometimes.
Yeah.
I mean, it's interesting too, because
it's fine if they use it.
It's just yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
It's open source, right?
And you met it to their credit does
contribute to open source,
but they do like one of the
biggest front end libraries react is meta
based and it's good.
Yeah.
Sorry, continue.
In fact, no, I was using funny enough.
Valve uses it in the Steam
store like in Steam itself.
It is react.
Big picture mode is react.
I think it's all react with PHP.
I think it's PHP and then
all of the steam UI is react.
Yeah.
Sorry.
No, you're right.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, the new steam
library is react based.
Everything in steam though is react.
Because I've had to modify it
doing some hacks in the past.
I've done some software releases for
steam and modifying it.
And yeah, it's react.
Yeah. It's react.
Interesting.
But no, like I don't know.
This is kind of it's kind of
neat to see though, you know?
Yeah.
Valve uses react.
Meta uses the valves thing.
I mean, that's good, I guess.
And it's also very indicative of valves
position as a sort of
Linux champion of sorts.
Yeah.
This could be positioning them to be like
just doing much more
like every time they.
So with the scheduler, I know sometimes
there can be like trade
offs for this type of stuff
where like, is there like, I don't know.
I have not looked into this much, but
does this CPU scheduler,
does this have any trade
offs though?
It just sounds like they need to have it
set up to where it can
have some micro schedulers
or something like that.
Yeah.
Because like it's really good.
It sounds like at one main process that
maybe has to utilize
maybe a couple other ones,
but that's all based off of one process.
Yeah.
I'm not like super versed in this, but
from what I, that's my understanding.
Yeah.
So that makes sense.
That would work really well on a massive
server where like they
don't have to switch, like
they have depending
what type of server it is.
There's their, yeah.
I'm not going to go too deep into it
until I read into it more,
but yeah, this is interesting.
It's lovely to see it.
And like, like high tech said, like this
is valve kind of being
at the forefront of Linux
optimization and that's
interesting to see as well.
Oh no, it does really well at one size
fits all scheduling,
at least for servers.
Interesting.
I think you're not
necessarily wrong either.
I think, but for a server, like it does a
really good job of
not, of like, it's closer
to a fleet wide default.
Yeah.
It can automatically without hand tuned
configurations do a better
job than a lot of their other
schedulers.
So yeah.
Okay.
That makes sense.
Interesting.
I will admit.
CPU schedules are a little, a little
above my head, but it
is good to see that.
I mean, Lord knows how much more valve
tech has under the hood
that we don't really know
or talk about all that much that can help
not just the steam
deck, but also the data
centers and like almost
everything too, to be honest.
Yeah.
Why are we pumping all
this money into Nvidia?
We need to start subsidizing valve.
Yeah, but I'm someone's
going to want to trade.
They make so much money.
I know.
They make so much money.
They could probably do even
more if they really wanted.
But yeah.
Yeah.
This is really cool though.
This is really cool.
I really, I really like, I'm wondering
what more is to come
from this whole thing.
You want to know what's more to come?
Spotify.
Spotify is downfall.
Someone somehow scraped all of Spotify,
downloaded all tracks.
I don't know if that includes our podcast
because we're on
Spotify as well, to be honest.
We don't get that many viewers.
We don't get that many
listeners from Spotify.
I don't believe I
believe last week checked.
It was Apple music.
That was actually the most popular, which
is interesting to me.
Apple podcasts is what
started podcasts almost.
They're like the second
and yeah, it makes sense.
But you'd also expect Spotify.
I used to use Spotify religiously a few
years ago and then I just got tired of
paying for it and everything.
And now that I, yeah, yeah, it's either
YouTube or Apple music for me.
But man, that's a lot
of data to shift through.
I'm doubt they're ever going to get to
our podcast and our podcast can be
downloaded from our podcast.
We can't get to our podcast feed.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, why download Spotify's
version when you just
download our version?
Exactly. There you go, guys.
We got to get back into it.
It's 300 terabytes to
store all of Spotify's library.
In case you were wondering.
300 terabytes.
How what percentage of that is a slot?
It seems like not that much.
It doesn't seem as much
as I thought it would be.
Probably not an
insignificant amount, but we shall see.
So essentially this blog called Anna's
Archive, that's the place that you would
not download it from, obviously.
You it's a torrent.
You can torrent it.
Holy crap, that's a torrent.
Like how is it broken up or is it just
all one massive torrent?
Let me check the site.
That torrent file would have to be like
multiple megabytes in size, like 300
megabytes per cent or something.
That would be crazy.
So they don't just do Spotify.
They are also just a
shadow library altogether.
They're like those like.
I can't say the names of the websites
because I can't remember them, but you
get what I'm saying, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, these are the sorts of websites
that where you would download peer
reviewed journals for free because you
have to pay to get
access to some of them.
Which is what which now that I think
about it is terrible.
Information should be
free for anyone to get.
And I would rather have peer reviewed
journals be at the top of the Google
listings than say, I
don't know, A.I. blogs.
But you know, there's
neither here nor there.
The problem with peer reviewed journals
and journals themselves is that there you
need a good communicator
to to do that type of stuff.
People, the average person is not going
to get very far in that.
I mean, look at our
literacy rate in America alone.
So yeah, I also don't. Yeah, I don't like
that things are also going
to pay a wall too, though.
That is true.
So.
Yeah.
I think. Yeah.
Sorry, what were you going to say?
No, nothing. So how did they was it hacked?
I don't understand
fully how they got all it.
Did they just like stream it?
And then every time they had a bot that
just would go through all of the Spotify
and just like cash it because there's I'm
sure there's ways to cash Spotify stuff.
If you just put it on your computer,
start listening to it and
you could probably record it.
I suspect it would do something.
I suspect it would do something. I suspect it would do something. I suspect it was something to the effect
of like YouTube DLP or whatever.
Like one of those like it's like one of
those command line tools that knows how
to break the DRM and download it.
Yeah.
Also, just just a fun fact, I checked on
Spotify in the last month.
We've had 213 plays on Spotify.
Not bad.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Let's see how big this torrent file is.
I found one.
I found so it's split up into.
So the point.
Wait, there's a two point.
What is this?
What are we looking at?
You're looking at a virus now.
I must be.
There's like three files.
There's.
See audio analysis.
See there's audio cover art.
And then there's.
Metadata as well.
Wait.
Is this are these not the music?
Wait, no, this is just the data.
Wait, hon.
By the way, I'm not downloading the
entirety of Spotify.
That's insane.
Well, for multiple reasons, I mean.
Yeah.
Like for starters, I don't
have enough storage for that.
And also, I don't think you
have enough funds for legal.
Yeah, I don't have enough funds.
So subscribe to our Patreon guys to help
fund high techs legal fees.
Yeah, man, that's crazy.
All right, so I don't actually know how
to I don't know how people would
actually download the
songs from Anna's archive.
All right, whatever.
That's fine.
That just means people
can download our podcast.
So I'm going to go ahead and download it. I'm going to go ahead
and download the podcast.
Yeah, no, I.
It'll be interesting to see how Spotify
is going to handle this because
I've been used.
There's going to be a lot of tracking
down and lawsuits and someone
probably going to jail.
Oh, but they did.
But on top of some pirating Spotify, you
know what they did as well?
Some data exploration.
Oh, the like this right here.
Yes.
Songs by popularity score.
I don't understand this.
I don't understand that graph either to
be honest is a horrible graph.
By the way, Tom's hardware.
It looks like it was
it's not their graph.
No, it was Anna's archives graphs.
I mean, you scroll on
the on the rights article.
There's a lot of these.
This is fine.
This is horrible.
You have to scale it down.
Like their skills is wrong. This is a fine graph.
Songs by popularity score.
I don't even know logarithmic scale.
Number of songs.
Yeah.
There's more though
stream analysis by popularity.
Total streams bars versus average song line.
And then you can see that. I mean, I think that's a good question. I mean, I think that's a good question. I mean, that's a lot of data that I'm
sure some of this Spotify was trying to
protect as much as this is probably more
damaging than the everything getting
sent all the songs being downloaded and
all the podcasts and everything.
You can also estimate that the top three
songs as of the writing have a higher
total of the number of songs that are being downloaded. And then you can see that the top three songs are being downloaded. And then you can see that the top three songs as of the writing have a higher
total stream count than the bottom 20 to
100 million songs combined.
Yeah.
Lady Gaga Bruno Mars.
Die with a smile.
Billy Eilish.
Billy eyelash.
Breads of a feather.
Bad Bunny.
Aka Mr.
Super Bowl.
DTM.
Dude.
He's because he's.
He's an American.
Yeah.
America.
America is American territory.
If you're born there,
you're an American citizen.
Yep.
Sorry.
Don't be the very that I just see what
else we got tracks by duration.
Your average song seems to sit around
three minutes and 15 seconds.
All these.
Yeah.
Let's see.
Long tracks by duration.
Off 30 music genres by artist count.
Operas at the top opera.
Is that the top by the artist council?
There's more art opera artists.
Oh, that is interesting, though.
Chamber music.
Maybe they mean like
elevator black metal.
Holy.
Oh, the least popular it seems is
underground hip hop.
Followed by hyper pop.
What is hyper pop?
No, no.
Should we find out?
No.
We want to get content struck.
Yeah.
I see.
Okay, guys.
I think we're going to have to start
wrapping up this episode, but there's.
I didn't realize how
much data there is in this.
This is this is what
I'm here for is the data.
Also, another data point.
Spotify is outperforming Apple Podcasts.
We had 75 plays on Apple Podcasts this
month versus 200 and what?
213.
And then do we maybe have some issues
with the Apple Podcast?
Well, I'm I'm logged into the actual
dashboards for each one.
I think Apple Podcasts like whole
downloads the episode like multiple times
per for some reason in our back end.
So it's weird.
Yeah, man.
We're ending on a good note.
We didn't hit one K on YouTube because by
the time the next episode airs is
going to be the new year, right?
There's always next year.
Hope we can have okay.
Yeah.
So there.
100K.
Sorry, I met a thousand.
Well, 100K.
Let's do it.
I'm not going to play.
Okay, guys.
Yeah, let's let's end this thing out.
Thank you guys for listening,
watching wherever you're at.
Make sure to like subscribe comment.
We love hearing your guys's comments.
We'll try to read more in the year 2026.
I mean, I read them.
I just try to respond to a little more.
But yeah, now we enjoy everything you
guys do for us and continue being
class, I guess classy until
the next year or whatever.
I'm getting too old.
Yeah.
I don't have any good terms.
That's okay, man.
Let's post Christmas.
Yeah, it's true.
I've been partying and eating lots of
junk food the last few days.
So then junk food.
I'm over.
Okay.
With that being said, we'll catch you
guys next time in the next episode in
the next year.
Peace out.
Later.
Happy new year.