16: Heavy HDMI

00:00SPEAKERI was at Gary's the other day, speaking of Luigi's Mansion, he has a piece of video game

00:03SPEAKERchach that is, I think, the best piece of video game chach I've ever seen, which is

00:08SPEAKERa Luigi's Mansion desk light that has Luigi and the ghost dog and the goo pack, and there's

00:14SPEAKERlike three different kinds of lights on it, and it actually looks sculpted and really

00:17SPEAKERgood, and it captures the S.

00:19SPEAKERIt's not just some cheesy, like it doesn't have the logo of the game silkscreened on

00:23SPEAKERthe lampshade.

00:24SPEAKERIt is not.

00:25SPEAKERThere's no lampshade.

00:26SPEAKERIt's just a statue that lights up, and then the ghost lights up enough to be like, kind

00:29SPEAKERof, it would be a bad desk light, but it's like an ambient light.

00:33SPEAKERWhen you say chach, does it have to have been a freebie for promotional purposes, or could

00:36SPEAKERit be bought?

00:37SPEAKERCould it be a store-bought thing?

00:38SPEAKERBecause I don't know if that qualifies as chach.

00:40SPEAKERAlso, I've never heard the term chach before.

00:43SPEAKERIt's short.

00:44SPEAKERI know what it's short for.

00:45SPEAKERI've never heard anybody truncate it.

00:46SPEAKERThat's how I always try.

00:47SPEAKERThis might be a me thing.

00:48SPEAKERIt sounds gross when you say it.

00:49SPEAKERIt is gross.

00:50SPEAKERIt's a gross guy.

00:51SPEAKERSo I asked Gary where he got it.

00:53SPEAKERHe said he got it from Greg Miller, and I don't know whether it's like the premium pack-in.

00:57SPEAKEROkay.

00:58SPEAKERIt could be.

00:59SPEAKERLike if you bought the Super Edition, you got that, or if it was something they sent

01:02SPEAKERout to press.

01:03SPEAKEROkay.

01:04SPEAKERBut it sounds pretty awesome.

01:05SPEAKERYeah.

01:06SPEAKERIt's really good.

01:07SPEAKERI'm going to have to Google Luigi lamp after this.

01:08SPEAKERYeah.

01:09SPEAKERI don't know if that can compete with the Grand Theft Auto Vice City coke mirror.

01:12SPEAKERWait.

01:13SPEAKERWhat?

01:14SPEAKERThat I saw at Ryan's house one time.

01:15SPEAKERThey sent a coke mirror?

01:16SPEAKERYes.

01:17SPEAKERIt's literally a coke mirror with a Vice City logo in the corner that they sent out.

01:21SPEAKERWas it Saints Row 3 that sent the dildo bat?

01:23SPEAKERProbably, yes.

01:24SPEAKEROr was it 4?

01:25SPEAKERI believe that was 3.

01:26SPEAKERYeah.

01:27SPEAKERThe more you get upset about that, the better.

01:29SPEAKERThat was...

01:30SPEAKERYeah, you're right.

01:31SPEAKERI don't know.

01:32SPEAKERThe coke mirror, I think, is worse than the dildo bat.

01:34SPEAKERIt's an inspired piece of promotion.

01:57SPEAKERWelcome!

01:58SPEAKERHi!

01:59SPEAKERTo another episode of Brad Will Made a Tech Pod.

02:05SPEAKERHello!

02:06SPEAKERIt's so kind of you to invite me to this podcast.

02:07SPEAKERI'm not having you...

02:08SPEAKERI'm in your house.

02:09SPEAKERThat's true.

02:10SPEAKERWe closed the curtains.

02:11SPEAKERI guess that's sort of less echoey.

02:12SPEAKERDo we co-own this?

02:13SPEAKERDo we both have equal claim to this podcast?

02:16SPEAKERI think, I think, I mean, Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

02:19SPEAKERThere's no...

02:20SPEAKEROur names are both in the title.

02:21SPEAKERRight.

02:22SPEAKERI mean, we could replace you with another Brad.

02:23SPEAKERThat's true.

02:24SPEAKEROr you could replace me with another Will.

02:25SPEAKERYeah.

02:26SPEAKERI think the...

02:27SPEAKERThat's a fact.

02:28SPEAKERLook, there's plenty.

02:30SPEAKERI think that...

02:31SPEAKERWhat do you think Will Smith's NAS is running the other Will Smith?

02:34SPEAKEROh, he's probably got some...

02:36SPEAKERYou think he's got...

02:37SPEAKERHe's probably running RAID-Z2.

02:38SPEAKERI bet he's big on redundancy, right?

02:40SPEAKEROh, man.

02:41SPEAKERLook, he's got a home installer business.

02:44SPEAKERHe spent $100,000 in the Malibu mansion, outfitted with...

02:48SPEAKERIt's probably just such a shitload of TiVo's, though, at this point.

02:51SPEAKERHe insisted on Cat6 to every room.

02:53SPEAKERCat6.

02:54SPEAKERFor sure.

02:55SPEAKERYeah, nothing.

02:56SPEAKERNo plenum.

02:57SPEAKERNo plenum.

02:58SPEAKERBrad?

02:59SPEAKERYes?

03:00SPEAKERIt's that most special time of month.

03:01SPEAKERIt's the time of month when we take questions...

03:03SPEAKERThat's right.

03:04SPEAKERIn the form of emails.

03:05SPEAKERThat are sent to techpod@content.town, the Internet's number one technology podcast resource

03:11SPEAKERdestination.

03:12SPEAKERThe most informed, authoritative...

03:15SPEAKERWe've read most of these.

03:16SPEAKER...pair of tech talkers on the Internet.

03:18SPEAKERYeah.

03:19SPEAKERWe've been doing this for two times 10 to the negative two years at this point, I think.

03:23SPEAKERThat's right.

03:24SPEAKERUh-huh.

03:25SPEAKERYeah.

03:26SPEAKERGot these emails in front of me.

03:27SPEAKERThe filtering process was basically scroll through the emails and figure out if we had

03:31SPEAKERsomething to say about each one of them.

03:33SPEAKERLook, that is as good a place as any to start.

03:36SPEAKERWhether it's a definitive answer or not is up to the listener.

03:39SPEAKERLook, sometimes we have thoughts, sometimes we have questions.

03:41SPEAKERThat's right.

03:42SPEAKERYeah.

03:43SPEAKERAll right.

03:44SPEAKERFirst email came from Joe in New York.

03:45SPEAKERHi, Joe.

03:46SPEAKER"I was thinking of replacing my Vive with an Index, but I'm not sure if it's worth the

03:50SPEAKER$1,000 plus tax and shipping.

03:54SPEAKERI read that the Index headset and controllers work with the original Vive base stations.

03:59SPEAKERIn that case, is it even worth getting the entire Index set?

04:03SPEAKERIs the jump in resolution from the Vive to the Index worth the money, besides the reduction

04:09SPEAKERin screen door effect?

04:10SPEAKERIs there any other benefit to the Index headset?

04:13SPEAKERUltimately, I do want the controllers.

04:15SPEAKERThey seem really cool and come with Half-Life Alyx.

04:18SPEAKERShould I save myself some money and just get the headset and controllers, or should I just

04:22SPEAKERget the controllers?"

04:24SPEAKERSo there's a lot of questions.

04:26SPEAKERThere's a lot going on here.

04:29SPEAKERFirst off, I recently went with Norm at Tested to Valve to play Half-Life Alyx on a whole

04:35SPEAKERshitload of different VR headsets.

04:37SPEAKERSo the reason they asked us to come up and try the game on Index and then also everything

04:42SPEAKERelse that they're supporting, which is basically like Windows MR, original Oculus Rift, new

04:51SPEAKEROculus Rift S, Oculus Quest with the link cable.

04:54SPEAKERDo you think that game will run on the, what was the dev?

04:57SPEAKERThe CV?

04:58SPEAKERNo.

04:59SPEAKERIt will not run on the CV1, I don't think.

05:00SPEAKERCV1?

05:01SPEAKERWas that the original, that was the prototype?

05:02SPEAKERYeah, I don't think Oculus supports CV1 anymore.

05:06SPEAKERValve's really falling down on the job.

05:08SPEAKERNo, no.

05:09SPEAKERCV1 is the release.

05:10SPEAKERRCDK?

05:11SPEAKERDK2.

05:12SPEAKERDK2?

05:13SPEAKERThat was the first one with the camera.

05:15SPEAKERThat would probably stand for dev game.

05:16SPEAKERYeah.

05:17SPEAKERValve, I thought they were supporting every headset, but...

05:20SPEAKERLook, man, they're just trying to keep Facebook down.

05:23SPEAKERShame.

05:24SPEAKERYeah.

05:25SPEAKERWhat do you want to, do you want to discuss the, so this is his first big question.

05:27SPEAKERHis actionable item here is, is it really worth getting an Index or if you already have

05:31SPEAKERa Vive?

05:32SPEAKERSo the answer to that is it depends.

05:36SPEAKERIf you don't have the, if you didn't get the pro audio strap for the Vive, the original

05:40SPEAKERVive with the rubber band head gasket and like your own headphones is pretty uncomfortable

05:46SPEAKERfor long-term play.

05:48SPEAKERAnd the other thing is they're not making those pro audio head straps anymore.

05:52SPEAKERSo, and the market for them has gone up dramatically because people are Frankenstein-ing them onto

05:56SPEAKERquests to make the quest more comfortable.

05:59SPEAKERSo if you don't already have the pro audio strap, it may be worth upgrading just for

06:07SPEAKERcomfort.

06:09SPEAKERThe other option is the Vive Pro, which is a lot more expensive than the same price as

06:13SPEAKERthe Index basically, and doesn't have the higher.

06:16SPEAKERSo when you upgrade from the Vive to the Index, you get the higher, slightly higher refresh

06:20SPEAKERresolution, which means that you have less screen door and you can actually read text

06:24SPEAKERin the headset.

06:25SPEAKERSo if you want to do stuff like run a virtual desktop on your, in your VR and have windows

06:29SPEAKERall over the place and get crazy, you can totally do that with the Index or the Vive

06:33SPEAKERPro.

06:34SPEAKERThe big thing that the Index offers, the headset offers in addition to comfort, which the headset's

06:40SPEAKERreally comfortable.

06:41SPEAKERThe speakers that are on the side that mount, they don't, they're not like on-ear speakers,

06:46SPEAKERthey're kind of off-ear, but they focus the sound into your ears in a really, really good

06:50SPEAKERway, is, are, are the best that I've used.

06:55SPEAKERAfter using a bunch of stuff side by side, they're very clearly better than everybody

06:59SPEAKERelse.

07:00SPEAKERHuh.

07:01SPEAKEROkay.

07:02SPEAKERThe refresh rate is a big deal.

07:07SPEAKERSo higher refresh rate, if you have a PC that can drive 144 Hertz in the headset or 120

07:11SPEAKERHertz in the headset versus 90, if you're susceptible to motion sickness, it's, it's

07:16SPEAKERmuch less effective.

07:17SPEAKERDoes that really help?

07:18SPEAKERIt helps.

07:19SPEAKEROkay.

07:20SPEAKERNow the controllers, if you have a Vive with the pro audio strap, I would just buy the

07:23SPEAKERcontrollers and be done.

07:24SPEAKERSo they do sell the controllers by themselves?

07:26SPEAKERThey sell the controllers by themselves, they sell the headset by itself, they sell the

07:29SPEAKERlighthouses by themselves.

07:30SPEAKEROh wow.

07:31SPEAKERThat's nice of them.

07:32SPEAKERThe utility matrix for that stuff is that the original Vive will work with lighthouse

07:39SPEAKERone.

07:40SPEAKERThe index will work with the launch Vive lighthouses.

07:43SPEAKERThe Vive pro will work with the launch Vive lighthouses.

07:47SPEAKERThe original Vive does not work with the lighthouse 2.0's that come with index.

07:53SPEAKEROkay.

07:54SPEAKERSo you have to have a Vive pro knuckles controllers or Vive pro controllers and, or an index to

08:00SPEAKERwork with the lighthouse 2.0.

08:02SPEAKERThe upshot sounds like to go out there and do your research and make sure you know what

08:06SPEAKERyou have and what works with what.

08:08SPEAKERYeah.

08:09SPEAKERBut also you can just buy the index headset and the controllers and use those with the

08:13SPEAKERold lighthouses and they're fine.

08:15SPEAKERThe benefit of the new lighthouses is mostly for people like what I do at foo or like installers

08:20SPEAKERand stuff like that, because you can put more than two lighthouses in a space, which normal

08:24SPEAKERpeople aren't going to do.

08:25SPEAKERRight.

08:26SPEAKERSo, so yeah, I, I think the big takeaway from,

08:30SPEAKERwe spent like four hours playing the game, three or four hours playing the game and then

08:34SPEAKERa whole day testing a bunch of different headsets.

08:37SPEAKERAnd the takeaway is that the Vive wands, the ones that shipped with the original Vive are,

08:40SPEAKERI think the worst controls for playing the game.

08:43SPEAKERLike it works and you can play it and it's fun, but not having kind of the grip is fiddly.

08:49SPEAKERLike those grip buttons are bad on those initial Vive wands.

08:52SPEAKERSo having either a physical button that you press on the Oculus controllers, the windows

08:56SPEAKERMR controllers, or having the analog touch controls with the knuckles, sorry, the Vive,

09:02SPEAKERthe index controllers makes a big difference in the, in the game, I think makes it a lot

09:07SPEAKERmore fun.

09:08SPEAKERSo a fair number of substantial upgrades, it sounds like, but also it's not a cheap

09:12SPEAKERupgrade.

09:13SPEAKERIt is not a cheap, like, yeah, like it's the difference between 300 bucks for the controllers

09:17SPEAKERalone, maybe a hundred bucks.

09:20SPEAKERIf you have to pay more than a hundred bucks to get a pro audio strap, don't, don't do

09:23SPEAKERthat.

09:24SPEAKEROn the other hand, how often does a new half-life game come out in VR?

09:27SPEAKERSo if you really want the optimal experience for that, it sounds like there are, there

09:31SPEAKERare advantages to, to trading up.

09:33SPEAKERI mean, we, we, we played on a Samsung windows, MR headset that used the, like the, the normal

09:39SPEAKERtouch pad and sticks, like the, the big things that were important from a control standpoint,

09:44SPEAKERwere being able to separate.

09:45SPEAKERAnd, and of course it's all uses steam's controller stuff.

09:48SPEAKERSo you can bind whatever you want, whatever verbs you want in the game to whatever buttons

09:51SPEAKERyou want on the controllers, using their default configurations as they were, when we tested

09:56SPEAKERa couple of weeks ago, the having the weapon select and the quick turns on different controls.

10:04SPEAKERSo, so, you know, with VR, especially if you're using one of the headsets, like the original

10:07SPEAKERrift that has to face forward, you have quick turns on one stick.

10:11SPEAKERUsually that'll flip you 30 or 45 or 90 degrees one way or the other.

10:16SPEAKERAnd on the rift, you had to click down on the stick to, to select weapons, select also

10:22SPEAKERthe Twitch and the flipping to the side, did the turn that sounds awkward.

10:26SPEAKERSo you would often flip the, hit the button and, and turn and get disoriented, which wasn't

10:32SPEAKERideal.

10:33SPEAKERHaving like on the windows, MR things that had the touch pad on the knuckles, which have

10:36SPEAKERthe touch pad on something else, had a touch pad, but it was Oculus controllers, Oculus

10:44SPEAKERcontrollers, always just even the newest ones.

10:46SPEAKERYeah.

10:47SPEAKEROkay.

10:48SPEAKERBut the point is you want to, you're going to want to bind that those two things to something

10:50SPEAKERelse.

10:51SPEAKEROkay.

10:52SPEAKERYo, what's up with that game?

10:53SPEAKERIt's dope.

10:54SPEAKERIt's really good.

10:55SPEAKERCool.

10:56SPEAKERYou, the gravity gloves mean you don't end up stooping and stuff as much.

10:58SPEAKERSo like you can look at something and kind of like force, pull them over to you and then

11:02SPEAKERcatch it.

11:03SPEAKERThat's great.

11:04SPEAKERUm, it's, it is very satisfying to throw stuff at things.

11:08SPEAKERI hope the part of the game that we saw at the very beginning, like you don't offensively

11:13SPEAKERthrow things at people.

11:15SPEAKERI hope that that stuff comes in later in the game so that, cause like it was so fucking

11:19SPEAKERfun to just grab a brick and huck it at somebody can become the gloves launch objects or just

11:24SPEAKERpull them to you.

11:25SPEAKERSo when you launch, you launched by throwing.

11:28SPEAKEROkay.

11:29SPEAKERSo is there any added force beyond your throw?

11:31SPEAKERLike do they add extra push to it?

11:33SPEAKERThe point that we had seen, maybe more of like a late game upgrade.

11:37SPEAKERI mean, look, there's a history of late game upgrades that make the gravity weapons into

11:42SPEAKERunstoppable killing machines.

11:43SPEAKERYeah.

11:44SPEAKERUm, it was, it was the thing that was neat playing it more than anything else was playing

11:49SPEAKERa game that had like triple a art into VR.

11:53SPEAKERThat's kind of, I've come to realize that's really all I care about with this thing, even

11:57SPEAKERif it doesn't really innovate in terms of VR mechanics too much, it's like, there just

12:01SPEAKERhaven't been that many games out there with that level of production value thrown at them

12:04SPEAKERin VR.

12:05SPEAKERWell, and, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff that, that comes with that.

12:09SPEAKERIt's like them clearly trying to make something that's a showcase.

12:13SPEAKERSo there's a lot of like little side paths to kind of explore.

12:16SPEAKERIt's a pretty, the part that we saw was pretty linear.

12:18SPEAKERLike the combat arenas open up a little bit, but the exploration parts are basically like

12:22SPEAKERyou finding your way through a maze, just like half life has always been, um, the, they

12:27SPEAKERdid multiple forms of, of locomotion.

12:30SPEAKERSo like you could do tell the normal valve teleport where you push forward and, and like

12:34SPEAKERrotate the stick to, to, you know, have the determinable orientation you face when you

12:39SPEAKERland.

12:40SPEAKERUm, they also had smooth locomotion.

12:43SPEAKERThe internet nerds got really upset about not having like ladder climbing, like in Boneworks

12:47SPEAKERwhere you physically use your hand and climb up the ladder, grab the rungs makes almost

12:51SPEAKEReverybody I've seen do that sick.

12:54SPEAKEROkay.

12:55SPEAKERUm, so yeah, like, like the things that they did do really well, like there was no, they

13:01SPEAKERdidn't take control of the camera from the player.

13:03SPEAKERSo there was no, at no point did the camera move without my head moving, which is key

13:09SPEAKERto not making people throw.

13:10SPEAKERLike they made this game to be accessible to a, to people who have never played VR before.

13:15SPEAKEROkay.

13:16SPEAKERUm, the other thing was the gun reload stuff was, it's so satisfying.

13:19SPEAKEROkay.

13:20SPEAKERYeah.

13:21SPEAKERI know it was the last thing I was going to ask is I feel like the one moment that most

13:24SPEAKERpeople I know picked up on or really were impressed by in that trailer is like digging

13:27SPEAKERaround on the shelf to find ammo.

13:29SPEAKERLike it doesn't seem like that is a mechanic that's represented a lot or I mean, are you

13:33SPEAKERinteracting with the environment a lot in ways like that?

13:35SPEAKERI opened a lot of drawers and I there, um, there's ammo on top of things on, on the reg.

13:42SPEAKERLike when you smash crates, there's ammo and stuff inside the crates.

13:46SPEAKERThey have the old half-life boxes with the yellow label on top.

13:48SPEAKERIt's a little grungier now there's peanuts inside the box.

13:52SPEAKERSo when you smash up the box, it's just like a little bit of ammo and a whole shit load

13:55SPEAKERof packing peanuts.

13:56SPEAKERThat sounds fun.

13:58SPEAKERIt's opening drawers.

14:00SPEAKERI haven't had as much fun opening drawers as I did like when the last time I played

14:03SPEAKERSkyrim.

14:04SPEAKERStrong endorsement.

14:05SPEAKERYeah.

14:06SPEAKERBest drawer opening.

14:07SPEAKERBest the drawer.

14:08SPEAKERWell, it's all one to one.

14:09SPEAKERYou just pull your arm back and you open those drawers best in class drawers.

14:13SPEAKERUm, that's great.

14:15SPEAKERI'm excited about playing.

14:16SPEAKERI like, I left and I was ready to play more.

14:18SPEAKERThat's cool.

14:19SPEAKERPlaying it for 10 hours over two days.

14:20SPEAKERThat's good to hear.

14:21SPEAKERThat's cool.

14:22SPEAKERUh, all right.

14:23SPEAKERUm, next email is from Brian and Culver city.

14:25SPEAKERWhy is there never a queue to watch the new season of stranger things or the Mandalorian?

14:29SPEAKERLike there are when a new call of duty launches, is it simply less concurrent users?

14:34SPEAKERUh, no, it's way more concurrent users probably.

14:37SPEAKERYeah.

14:38SPEAKERI was, that's what I, when I first read this email, I was like, God, there must be, well,

14:42SPEAKERcall of duty might be an outlier because it's so popular, but even then, but even then like

14:46SPEAKERstreaming video is so ubiquitous at this point, it has to be like almost an order of magnitude

14:49SPEAKERin some cases.

14:50SPEAKERLike if you think about a big live stream event, like the state of the union, or I don't

14:56SPEAKERknow, what's something that's huge on YouTube that people, that millions of people stream.

15:00SPEAKERUm, I mean, I know I'm, I'm completely blanking inauguration, stuff like that maybe.

15:06SPEAKERI don't know.

15:07SPEAKERUh, so, or even, even like with something like a Netflix, it doesn't have to be everybody

15:11SPEAKERwatching the same show all at one time.

15:13SPEAKERIt's just the number of people using the service.

15:14SPEAKERRight.

15:15SPEAKERWell, so, okay.

15:16SPEAKERSo the TLDR is we're really good at delivering files over the internet now because at the

15:21SPEAKERend of the day, all a streamed video on Netflix is, is an H two six four video file that like

15:27SPEAKERis just, you know, linked to a webpage.

15:30SPEAKERYou're really just downloading the video, right?

15:32SPEAKERIt's just that it displays and then disappears into the ether when it's done instead of being

15:37SPEAKERsaved somewhere.

15:38SPEAKERWell in streaming, but like streaming a live event is a little bit different because that's,

15:43SPEAKERthat's more like streaming game seven of the world series is difficult because like latency

15:47SPEAKERmatters and like they can't slip frames and fall back in time or else you'll get out of

15:51SPEAKERsync with everybody else that's watching and bitching about the game on Twitter.

15:55SPEAKERSo that becomes obvious pretty quickly.

15:57SPEAKERYeah.

15:58SPEAKEROr like in my neighborhood, you like when there's warriors games on, we know if Hulu

16:01SPEAKERis behind because the fireworks go off in the neighborhood before the, before the game

16:05SPEAKERis over.

16:06SPEAKERYeah.

16:07SPEAKERUm, so, so yeah, like it's just a video file.

16:12SPEAKERWhereas with call of duty, they have, if, if they assume that there's going to be 50,000

16:17SPEAKERpeople playing or a hundred thousand people or a million people playing at any moment,

16:20SPEAKERthen they have to have that many virtual servers.

16:23SPEAKERAnd it's easy.

16:25SPEAKERLike if you think about like while launch timeframe when the cues were 3000 people deep

16:29SPEAKERand like they didn't have enough physical servers for all the people that bought the

16:33SPEAKERgame that, that was, that's a, it's a little bit different now cause there's cloud infrastructure

16:38SPEAKERfor spinning up servers, but there's still, it still takes time.

16:42SPEAKERAnd it's a different kind of network interaction.

16:44SPEAKERIt's not, it's not even, it's not a one way stream of data to your house.

16:47SPEAKERIt's a back and forth.

16:48SPEAKERLike you're constantly having to communicate with the server in both directions.

16:51SPEAKERWell then the server has to have like CPU and memory allocated per user or, or, or probably

16:57SPEAKERper server.

16:58SPEAKERLike, like if you think about something called duty, they probably running multiple game

17:01SPEAKERservers on each virtual server in a cloud, but still it's like, like there's costs and

17:08SPEAKERstuff associated with that.

17:09SPEAKERThere's amount of CPU allocated per user and, and it's, I mean basically there's whole teams

17:16SPEAKERthat work on those big live multiplayer games that do nothing but figure out how to make

17:21SPEAKERthe server infrastructure dynamic.

17:23SPEAKERAnd then when on launch day it rolls out and there's a queue, it means that having a million

17:29SPEAKERpeople hit it at once has found some bottleneck that they didn't anticipate or weren't able

17:33SPEAKERto test for.

17:34SPEAKERSo then like, like the good examples of the login server, right?

17:40SPEAKERLike if the, if the game servers are set up to accommodate a million people at a time,

17:44SPEAKERbut the login servers can't, can't handle a hundred thousand people hitting them at

17:48SPEAKERany given moment, then the moment those servers go online, there's going to be a queue until

17:52SPEAKERthe login server catches up.

17:53SPEAKERRight.

17:54SPEAKERIs all there is to it.

17:55SPEAKERAnd like on web servers, we've built a lot of infrastructure for delivering big files

18:01SPEAKERto the point that that like your Netflix, your big files that are the Netflix videos

18:05SPEAKERdon't live on Netflix's server in Hoboken, New Jersey, wherever the fuck Netflix is,

18:11SPEAKERthey live.

18:12SPEAKERI thought they were here.

18:13SPEAKERAren't behind me probably.

18:14SPEAKERIt doesn't matter is the point.

18:16SPEAKERThey have an office here.

18:17SPEAKERYeah.

18:18SPEAKERThey live on a content distribution network that's located networkally close to your ISP.

18:24SPEAKERSo that I just made up a word.

18:26SPEAKERNetworkical location.

18:27SPEAKERBut it's, it's, it's close to where your ISP is so that they can deliver those files

18:34SPEAKERwithout having to do a bunch of ops over the internet.

18:36SPEAKERYes, that's it.

18:37SPEAKERYes.

18:38SPEAKERLet's see.

18:39SPEAKERKyle from Portland has an email.

18:42SPEAKERBrad has mentioned to the 30 foot HDMI cable that he rolls out when he wants to run his

18:46SPEAKERPC out to his TV.

18:47SPEAKERAnd I'm trying to get the same kind of setup in my place.

18:50SPEAKERI have a powered USB cable that works well, but having some issues with the HDMI cable

18:55SPEAKERand the video signal right now, the video signal is dropping.

18:58SPEAKERThe screen just goes black for a few seconds and then comes back on.

19:02SPEAKERThis happens repeatedly.

19:04SPEAKERDid you run into any issues putting together a, your office to live in room setup and what

19:08SPEAKERare you currently using to make the setup work?

19:10SPEAKERDoes that sound like a handshaking issue to you?

19:13SPEAKERIt sounds like power signal is just signaled.

19:16SPEAKERUsually HDMI is five meters or three meters, right?

19:18SPEAKERThink so.

19:19SPEAKERMine is 30 feet, which would be six meters.

19:23SPEAKERYes.

19:24SPEAKERSo did you buy a powered one?

19:26SPEAKERIs that right?

19:27SPEAKERYeah.

19:28SPEAKER30 feet divided by three.

19:29SPEAKEROh, 10 meters.

19:30SPEAKERSorry.

19:31SPEAKERI thought it was 10.

19:32SPEAKERIt's like nine point something.

19:33SPEAKERRoughly three feet to a meter.

19:34SPEAKERRight.

19:35SPEAKERIt's not powered, but I did.

19:36SPEAKERThat was a consideration.

19:37SPEAKERWhen I bought this cable, God saints were the third was the first PC game I played on

19:41SPEAKERit.

19:42SPEAKERIf that tells you anything.

19:43SPEAKERSo nine, nine years ago, it's like HP, HDMI two or something years ago.

19:46SPEAKERIt's an old cable.

19:47SPEAKERI got it from honor price, but I knew that a signal strength was an issue over distance.

19:53SPEAKERSo I took a gamble and just bought a very heavy gauge cable.

19:56SPEAKERI checked.

19:57SPEAKERCause I, you know, I read this email before we came in here.

19:59SPEAKERI checked.

20:00SPEAKERIt's a 22 gauge HDMI cable.

20:01SPEAKERWow.

20:02SPEAKERThat's a chalker.

20:03SPEAKERThick ass cable.

20:04SPEAKERYeah.

20:05SPEAKERYou're not hiding that thing.

20:06SPEAKERAnd it worked like it's totally fine over 30 feet.

20:08SPEAKERI get zero signal problems from, from end to end.

20:12SPEAKERI even read it.

20:13SPEAKERYou're also only doing 1080p, not 4K.

20:14SPEAKERYes.

20:15SPEAKERYes.

20:16SPEAKERI'm only pushing 1080, 60 over that.

20:18SPEAKERSo that's maybe a factor.

20:20SPEAKERI don't know.

20:21SPEAKERI'm even running it.

20:22SPEAKERIt's going through one, two.

20:25SPEAKERI bet it's going through four other HTM or maybe five other HTMI junction points from

20:32SPEAKERPC to TV.

20:33SPEAKEROh, you have like splitters.

20:35SPEAKERSo I bought a price.

20:36SPEAKERIf you ever looked, has got a ton of interesting little like hinged and swiveling HTMI extenders.

20:42SPEAKEROh my.

20:43SPEAKERI'm not powered just for just physical adapters.

20:46SPEAKERYeah.

20:47SPEAKERYeah.

20:48SPEAKERJust, just tiny little God.

20:49SPEAKERAnd I got them specifically cause I cable.

20:50SPEAKERSo it's such a, it's such a heavy ass cable.

20:51SPEAKERYeah.

20:52SPEAKERHaving that cable hanging out of the back of the GP or out of the video card seemed

20:55SPEAKERlike a pretty bad idea for the integrity of that port.

20:58SPEAKERYeah.

20:59SPEAKERNot to mention you might trip over it, but it's going down the whole yank it out.

21:02SPEAKERSo it's on a, I've got one coming out that is both tinged and swivel that comes out of

21:06SPEAKERthe video card, which gives it both gives it flex and turn.

21:10SPEAKERI'm amazed this works.

21:12SPEAKERThat is going to a very light gauge, like six inch extender down to the, then the big

21:19SPEAKERboy goes all the way down the hall and then I've got like a six foot one coming out of

21:22SPEAKERthe back of the receiver around to meet it with another one of those little points being

21:28SPEAKERlike the signal, even with all that, the signal is, again, it's only a 10 80 60, but it comes

21:33SPEAKERin nice and clean.

21:34SPEAKERSo I was going to say, if you have trouble with not making the distance, like you need

21:37SPEAKERto go further than you can with the length cable that you can do.

21:41SPEAKERYou can always get like an HTMI splitter.

21:44SPEAKERThat is a powered one that lives in between like, like some, not something designed to

21:49SPEAKERswitch back and forth between two inputs, which doesn't have to have any logic at all,

21:53SPEAKERbut something that physically takes one signal, an HTMI signal makes it two.

21:57SPEAKERAnd you can plug those in midway down the course and you can do two 15 foot runs and

22:00SPEAKERhave no problems.

22:01SPEAKERAnd that shouldn't introduce any extra latency or anything like that.

22:03SPEAKERIt might add a little bit, but yeah, like, you know, realistically, I'm not playing fighting

22:07SPEAKERgames in my living room or if I am, I'm playing on a console, like single digit milliseconds.

22:11SPEAKERIf I had to guess.

22:12SPEAKERYeah.

22:13SPEAKERSo you can do that in Stadia.

22:14SPEAKERAnd I've also got a, I've got two 15 foot USB extenders coming out of the PC as well.

22:19SPEAKEROne for the Xbox one controller dongle and one for a Logitech kind of all in one trackpad

22:27SPEAKERkeyboard.

22:28SPEAKEROh, nice.

22:29SPEAKERQ-hickey, which they're 30 bucks.

22:30SPEAKERThey're everywhere.

22:31SPEAKERAnd I was just gonna say, I think I read when I bought those that 15 feet is about the practical

22:35SPEAKERlimit for unpowered USB before you start getting degradation.

22:39SPEAKERBut you can do a hub there as well and keep making them go a long way.

22:42SPEAKERAnd then the last thing, just real quick, the thing I did was I just Velcro tied all

22:46SPEAKERthose cables together.

22:47SPEAKERYou made a snake.

22:48SPEAKERSo yeah.

22:49SPEAKERSo it coils up nice and neat and is super easy to roll out and lay back behind the PC.

22:54SPEAKERWhat's funny is in the three 60 days, the old three 60 dongle, the range on that thing

22:59SPEAKERwas exceptional.

23:00SPEAKERI don't know if you remember it, but like the big fat one.

23:03SPEAKERYeah.

23:04SPEAKERThere's like a, it was like a round.

23:05SPEAKERWell, not the, it wasn't that big, but now it's like a tiny little USB thumb drive looking

23:09SPEAKERthing.

23:10SPEAKERYeah.

23:11SPEAKERAnd that thing I could use, I would plug it in my computer.

23:13SPEAKERI would just use that in the living room.

23:14SPEAKERAnd I literally have, like my network ports are back to back, like the living room one

23:19SPEAKERin the, in the office one face each other.

23:22SPEAKERSo I just popped up, popped a plug out in there and just ran an HDMI cable through the

23:26SPEAKERhole.

23:27SPEAKERThat's awesome.

23:28SPEAKERAnd it was only like, it was like eight feet long and totally reached the TV.

23:31SPEAKERAnd then I would just use the game pad.

23:33SPEAKERSo awesome.

23:34SPEAKERFrom the, from the, do you, through the wall, that's the dream, but the Xbox one, one doesn't

23:39SPEAKERpenetrate the wall as well, or it doesn't go through the TV as well.

23:42SPEAKERSo cause it uses wifi direct and it just never, it never worked.

23:48SPEAKERRight.

23:49SPEAKERInteresting.

23:50SPEAKERSo I had to, that's why I started using this team link actually.

23:53SPEAKERThat's interesting to hear because I've had not the best luck with the signal quality

23:57SPEAKERas well.

23:58SPEAKEROr I guess the Xbox specifically with the audio, do you ever plug headphones in?

24:02SPEAKERNever.

24:03SPEAKERReally?

24:04SPEAKERNo.

24:05SPEAKERI do on the steam link and it works fine.

24:06SPEAKEROkay.

24:07SPEAKERSo I, so like on the PS4, I know that's Bluetooth.

24:09SPEAKERThat's a totally different standard, but like I plug headphones into the PS4 controller

24:12SPEAKERand it's been nothing but perfect for eight years or seven years or whatever.

24:18SPEAKERBut I cannot get good audio out of an Xbox controller.

24:20SPEAKERI've tried multiple controllers.

24:21SPEAKERIt just breaks up like crackles, like drops very sporadically.

24:26SPEAKERI wonder if you plug the USB hub in the middle of that 15 foot cable, this is even to the

24:30SPEAKERconsole.

24:31SPEAKERThat's six feet in front of me.

24:32SPEAKERThis is, this is both using the PC dongle and directly to an Xbox one.

24:36SPEAKERLike the, the audio has just always been terrible for me.

24:38SPEAKERNo matter what you have one of the second gen Bluetooth, Xbox controllers.

24:42SPEAKERYes, this is trying, this is using both generations that have had the the Bluetooth, the no, the

24:48SPEAKERheadphone jack built in.

24:50SPEAKERI bet if you did it with the Bluetooth one, it would be fine because I play steam link

24:54SPEAKERon the, so I, I bought Bluetooth, Xbox controllers for steam links because I was tired of plugging

24:59SPEAKERin Xbox 360 dongles and having to keep a fourth controller around to do PC games in the living

25:06SPEAKERroom and the bedroom.

25:08SPEAKERAnd it works fine on the Bluetooth, but it never, I could never get it like getting the

25:13SPEAKERXbox wireless dongle working with the steam link was always a hassle.

25:17SPEAKERYeah.

25:18SPEAKERI just giving up and buying something else just makes me grouchy though.

25:21SPEAKERI'm look, I'm grouchy anyway, so I refuse, I can't.

25:25SPEAKERThat's the more responsible choice.

25:26SPEAKERI just, I don't know, man.

25:27SPEAKERThat's like a six foot distance from the couch to the Xbox.

25:29SPEAKERI don't know why it's so bad, but anyway, yeah, maybe the Xbox is just bad bread.

25:34SPEAKERPossible.

25:35SPEAKERYeah.

25:36SPEAKERWe're in luck.

25:37SPEAKERThere's new one coming out soon.

25:38SPEAKERYou have a 360 under your TV star.

25:39SPEAKERI mean, there's, I have an extra shelf.

25:41SPEAKEROkay.

25:42SPEAKERMight as well put something there.

25:44SPEAKERYeah.

25:45SPEAKERIf, if, if anyone, if anyone listening can think of a better alternative than a 360 on

25:49SPEAKERmy extra entertainment center shelf, I dug it out to play rock band the other day, right?

25:54SPEAKERLike there's still games that have not made the jump.

25:57SPEAKERYeah.

25:58SPEAKERSo rock band three is way better than rock band four rip rock band shots fired.

26:01SPEAKERYeah, I know.

26:02SPEAKERHot takes.

26:03SPEAKERAll right.

26:04SPEAKEROkay.

26:05SPEAKERJosh from Brooklyn.

26:06SPEAKERI recently built a new PC and ended up buying an AMD Ryzen 3,700 X CPU in previous builds.

26:14SPEAKERI had discounted AMD as a budget choice rather than a competitor, but this time around AMD

26:19SPEAKERis now a direct competitor and even a leader to Intel.

26:23SPEAKERWhat changed that their chips are now so much more competitive?

26:26SPEAKERWas it architectural changes or had I just discounted them due to word of mouth?

26:30SPEAKERI mean, my understanding is they have gotten a lot better.

26:33SPEAKERLike they're, they were definitely kind of out of the running in the performance market

26:38SPEAKERfor a while.

26:39SPEAKERRight.

26:40SPEAKERSo like the heyday of AMD to me was late nineties to, I guess like 2020.

26:45SPEAKERYeah.

26:46SPEAKERLike the Duron Athlon era was the, like I bought nothing but AMD for like 10 years.

26:51SPEAKERWe even in 2010, I went back to Intel.

26:53SPEAKERWe put an Athlon on the cover of the maximum PC for the first time in like probably 2004,

26:59SPEAKERmaybe 2003 because it hit, they hit a gigahertz before Intel did.

27:04SPEAKERRight.

27:05SPEAKERAnd then I don't really know what happened in the intervening decade because I got back

27:10SPEAKERon Intel and kind of stopped paying attention.

27:11SPEAKERSo part of it is that like part of the challenge with this stuff is that if you make the wrong

27:16SPEAKERbet, it takes a long time to course correct.

27:19SPEAKERIt takes a long time to course correct.

27:20SPEAKERLike that's the problem Intel is having now, right?

27:22SPEAKERWell, that's the problem Intel had during the Athlon days is they were betting on clocks

27:25SPEAKERon Pentium 4 reaching ridiculous clock speeds and having a really deep pipeline.

27:31SPEAKERAnd then that bet didn't pay off because they weren't able to hit the clock speeds they

27:33SPEAKERneeded for the deep pipeline to work.

27:35SPEAKERAnd then they had to rejigger their whole thing for multi, like massively multi-core.

27:39SPEAKERRight.

27:40SPEAKERThat takes years.

27:41SPEAKERYeah.

27:42SPEAKERAnd AMD bet that multi-core was going to be a big deal, but then it took them a while

27:46SPEAKERboth for the software and the compilers to catch up with the number of cores they were

27:49SPEAKERputting out.

27:52SPEAKERAnd also the big problem AMD always has both on graphics cards and CPUs is that the default

27:59SPEAKERthat I'm air quoting default, but the perceived default in the industry that people develop

28:03SPEAKERon is Intel and Nvidia.

28:05SPEAKERSo like there's always weird shit that happens around the edges.

28:08SPEAKERThat was actually one of the things that pushed me away from that platform was like, it was

28:14SPEAKERsuper cost effective.

28:15SPEAKERI know I said it before, like when you were a broke college student, just trying to run

28:18SPEAKERquake faster, like overclocking that thing, 50% was a huge thing.

28:22SPEAKERBut there were always issues around like motherboard shifts at drivers and Ram that are like, you

28:28SPEAKERknow, the memory controller didn't like the timings on your Ram and you had to tweak the

28:32SPEAKERhell out of that stuff to make it stable.

28:33SPEAKERIt had shitty 64 bit performance.

28:35SPEAKERSo there were just, there's all these little idiosyncrasies that just made it kind of a

28:38SPEAKERpain in the ass to deal with.

28:40SPEAKERIt sounds like that stuff has mostly gotten better, but I think like memory compatibility

28:44SPEAKERis still an issue.

28:45SPEAKERI still, I still see motherboard manufacturers putting out like approved lists of memory.

28:49SPEAKEREvery motherboard does that.

28:50SPEAKEREvery motherboard comes with a list of approved DIMMs.

28:52SPEAKERWell, that's fair.

28:53SPEAKEROkay.

28:54SPEAKERBut it seems, it seems like it's still maybe more of an issue on that side.

28:56SPEAKERAs I understand it, the thing with the, I haven't built a Ryzen system yet.

28:59SPEAKERI should do that this year actually.

29:01SPEAKERBut the thing with Ryzen, as I understand it, is that it's very sensitive memory timings.

29:06SPEAKERSo performances.

29:08SPEAKERSo if you get the wrong memory, you'll see a pretty significant hit on your performance

29:13SPEAKERversus getting the good memory, which, which you'll see that is this, where are we talking

29:17SPEAKERabout Chiplets?

29:18SPEAKERDo you want to talk about Chiplets here?

29:19SPEAKERWe'll get there eventually.

29:20SPEAKERYeah, for sure.

29:21SPEAKERSo, so the thing that AMD did with Ryzen, that's really neat is in the early days of

29:27SPEAKERmulti-core design, like the pre pre-core, I guess, what's Intel's, yeah, pre-core multi-core

29:35SPEAKERIntel CPUs.

29:37SPEAKERThey just took two Pentiums and glued them together on a chip.

29:40SPEAKERAnd then they'd talk to each other across the North bridge.

29:43SPEAKERSo like in order to say so two discrete pieces of Silicon on the same package, two discrete

29:48SPEAKERpieces of Silicon on the same package that we're talking through the memory bus of the,

29:53SPEAKERof the memory of the CPU, probably like underneath the shared heat spreader or something like

29:56SPEAKERthat, not visible.

29:57SPEAKERIt looked like one chip when you were plugging it in, but it was two, two cores.

30:00SPEAKERThat's what I mean.

30:01SPEAKERAnd there are problems.

30:02SPEAKERThere were problems with that in that the two cores couldn't like pass data back and

30:05SPEAKERforth at CPU speed.

30:07SPEAKERThey had to pass it across at memory speed, which is a lot order of magnitude slower.

30:11SPEAKERSo they couldn't even then they switched to designs that used like a shared cache.

30:17SPEAKERSo like they could speak across the L3 cache or L4 cache or whatever.

30:20SPEAKERAnd that was a lot faster than that.

30:22SPEAKERThat was better.

30:23SPEAKERAnd that's where like all the Nehalem on stuff started.

30:26SPEAKERThat's when multi-core started to get really good.

30:29SPEAKERThis was still before you had multiple cores on the same time.

30:31SPEAKERThis was when you, that was when you started getting multiple cores on the same time.

30:35SPEAKERSo then the problem with putting multiple cores on the same die though, is that if you

30:40SPEAKERhave say four cores on a die and three cores will run at the desired clock speed of that

30:46SPEAKERCPU and one won't, you can't sell a tri-core CPU.

30:50SPEAKERAnd they maybe didn't want to sell, you know, this is where like the 6600 and all those

30:56SPEAKERkind of $300 hexa core parts come from is that they make a bunch of massive core CPUs

31:02SPEAKERfor servers and stuff like that.

31:04SPEAKERAnd the ones that don't bend at the speed that they're the ones that don't test right

31:07SPEAKERat the speed that they're going to run, that they're trying to sell, they'll just spin

31:10SPEAKERdown and sell for 300 bucks to people who want to make videos on their PCs or whatever.

31:15SPEAKERUm, I would not to digress too much, but if we had, we probably would need an expert in

31:20SPEAKERhere to get a whole episode out of this, but I would, I would spend a whole hour asking

31:24SPEAKERquestions about microchip fabrication.

31:26SPEAKERLike I find that Lloyd case would come on and talk to us about that process to be completely

31:29SPEAKERfascinating from like the clean room aspect of having to go in there and what looks like

31:33SPEAKERa hazmat suit.

31:34SPEAKERUm, so the idea of yield being variable and like not knowing how good the chips you get

31:39SPEAKERon, get off of your wafer going to be and what causes those issues.

31:42SPEAKERCause I, my limited understanding is that those problems are happening at like the atomic

31:48SPEAKERscale at this point.

31:49SPEAKERSometimes.

31:50SPEAKERYeah.

31:51SPEAKERUm, it can be like, like not a fingerprint obviously, but like the equivalent of a tiny

31:56SPEAKERimperfection in the, like, like the, the, the Silicon wafers they get are like 99.9994%

32:03SPEAKERpure, right?

32:05SPEAKERSo it's the 0.006% right.

32:09SPEAKERIf you, if you get, you're unlucky and you get one of those where that impurity exists,

32:12SPEAKERlike, like one, one tiny, almost microscopic spot where the current doesn't quite flow

32:17SPEAKERproperly.

32:18SPEAKERYou're screwed.

32:19SPEAKEROr like, I would assume it's like a dust mote flies in between the laser and the wafer when

32:23SPEAKERit's etching apart.

32:24SPEAKEROr, you know, like we're talking about things that are nanoscale constructions.

32:29SPEAKERSo yeah, it doesn't take a whole lot to mess them up.

32:31SPEAKERYes.

32:32SPEAKERThat stuff is fascinating to me.

32:33SPEAKERBut anyway, I don't mean to interrupt.

32:34SPEAKERIt's funny.

32:35SPEAKEROne of the guys in my Twitch chat works in a Silicon fab.

32:39SPEAKERI don't know who's I wouldn't say if I did, but he like the number of toxic chemicals,

32:45SPEAKERlike, like there's a chemist and stuff that are in my, in the chat on the reg and he's

32:51SPEAKERtalking about shit that everybody else is just cringing.

32:54SPEAKERLike hydrofluoric acid is some of the scariest shit on earth.

32:56SPEAKERAnd he's like, Oh yeah, we, we got in the chilled hydrofluoric container the other day

33:01SPEAKERand there were barrels of it, icicles of hydrofluoric acid.

33:04SPEAKERYikes.

33:05SPEAKERYeah.

33:06SPEAKERTerrifying.

33:07SPEAKERAnyway.

33:08SPEAKERSo yeah, the, the chiplets let them break out with, I think third gen, they started

33:15SPEAKERdoing DRAM and IO on one like center core chip.

33:19SPEAKERYeah.

33:20SPEAKERAnd then if you ever see a picture of the package of the current Ryzons, it's like one,

33:24SPEAKERit's kind of one big chip in the middle and then a bunch of little satellite chiplets.

33:28SPEAKERThey call them around the edges.

33:29SPEAKERSo instead of putting those CPU cores on a monolithic monolithic piece, one piece of

33:34SPEAKERSilicon, they do them separately.

33:36SPEAKERAnd what that means is that then they can test each of those cores individually so they

33:40SPEAKERcan bend more efficiently, which means that like the CPU's that run at the desired speeds

33:45SPEAKERend up all together and the CPU's that are slower end up all together.

33:49SPEAKERSo it's much more efficient and that means that they can sell the CPU's cheaper, like

33:53SPEAKERthat's how we're capable.

33:54SPEAKERI assume that's how you see like the thread rippers and so forth out there that are offering

33:57SPEAKERtwo or three times more threads than, than Intel for the same price.

34:01SPEAKERSo the thing that changed is that the technologies that let us do the CPU, the inter-package

34:07SPEAKERcommunication got much better.

34:10SPEAKERYou're talking about kind of the interconnect between the individual chips.

34:13SPEAKERYeah.

34:14SPEAKERYeah.

34:15SPEAKERCause like in the, in the, in that old core days, they had to go out at memory bus speed,

34:18SPEAKERwhich was like 2,400 megahertz or something like that back then it was slow.

34:22SPEAKERNow they can communicate.

34:24SPEAKERThere's L3 on the chiplets on the CPU core chiplets, but they can communicate with the

34:29SPEAKERother chips across the DRAM and IO bus on that big chip in the center of the, of the

34:34SPEAKERpackage.

34:36SPEAKERAnd it seems to be very efficient.

34:37SPEAKERYeah.

34:38SPEAKERThat seems like a smart design.

34:39SPEAKERThe one other thing I've seen, and I only know very little about this, but it sounds

34:41SPEAKERlike and I know like die size is not everything, but I think AMD has been on seven nanometer

34:46SPEAKERfor a while.

34:47SPEAKERAnd it seems like Intel is still somehow struggling to get there.

34:50SPEAKERIt's it's, I mean, the process reductions, as I understand it, haven't made as much of

34:55SPEAKERa, like, as you get closer to the theoretical limits of what we can do, the improvements

35:00SPEAKERaren't as good as they were going from like 35 nanometer to 17 nanometer or 35 millimeter.

35:05SPEAKERI, anyway, it doesn't matter micro micrometer to 17 micrometer, like you're, you're still

35:12SPEAKERseeing process like the, the, the, my understanding is that the, the general feeling is that Intel

35:20SPEAKERis in a better spot because they have headroom on process where AMD doesn't necessarily

35:25SPEAKERanymore.

35:27SPEAKERBut the, the thing that's interesting about those rise in chips out is we talk about chickens

35:30SPEAKERand eggs a lot here, but having these core, these CPU's that are mass market CPU's now

35:35SPEAKERwith 16 and 32 cores is going to make the applications that care about performance,

35:42SPEAKERpay much more attention to threading.

35:45SPEAKERWhich I hope will come down to games.

35:47SPEAKERThat seems to be better, better for everybody in the long run.

35:49SPEAKERCause yeah, like it's, I seem, it seems like when I look at game benchmarks, it seems like

35:53SPEAKERsingle threaded performance is still the thing that matters there.

35:56SPEAKERAnd that seems crazy in light of these multi-core consoles having been around for so long.

36:01SPEAKERWell, so you see people dump things that aren't performance gates.

36:07SPEAKERWhat that means is that the bottleneck is always going to run on a single core, right?

36:11SPEAKERSo like if the bottleneck is triangle, this is a bad example because it's not a real one,

36:15SPEAKERbut triangle set up for your 3d scene and that's going to determine what the rest of

36:20SPEAKERthe frame rates are.

36:21SPEAKERIt doesn't matter how fast the sound process running on a different thread and the physics

36:25SPEAKERprocess running on a different thread and the AI process running on a different thread

36:30SPEAKERrun because they have plenty of excess cycles.

36:33SPEAKERThat makes sense.

36:34SPEAKERYeah.

36:35SPEAKEROkay.

36:36SPEAKERI mean, look, everything about PCs and computers in general is shifting bottlenecks around.

36:38SPEAKERSure.

36:39SPEAKERSo.

36:40SPEAKERSeems to be the way.

36:41SPEAKERBut yeah, Ryzen seems good.

36:42SPEAKERYeah.

36:43SPEAKERI'm with you.

36:44SPEAKERI I'm probably another year or two away from a new build, but AMD is back in consideration

36:49SPEAKERfor me for the first time in a decade.

36:51SPEAKERI think it's just nice to see, like, it's nice to see competition in the CPU space again.

36:55SPEAKERYeah.

36:56SPEAKERI'm thinking, I like my, I just rebuilt my desktop PC this last year.

37:00SPEAKERBut my stream PC, the strip PC that runs my Twitch stream is three, four years old.

37:07SPEAKERThat would be a great place to run.

37:09SPEAKERYeah.

37:10SPEAKERMore cores.

37:11SPEAKERI would love to rip some threads there.

37:12SPEAKERLike that's a, I mean, that's a workload that would really directly benefit from it.

37:16SPEAKERAnd that's the, that's the thing is like put 32 cores in that thing and turn OBS all the

37:19SPEAKERway up.

37:20SPEAKERLet's see what happens.

37:21SPEAKERI will say real quick, just if you're thinking about an upgrade soon, like, yes, I know there's

37:25SPEAKERalways something to wait for in computer hardware, but they're about to move to Zen three, which

37:29SPEAKERis their next like big micro architecture shift.

37:32SPEAKERYeah.

37:33SPEAKERAnd they're talking like that's going to be a massive efficiency improvement in terms of

37:37SPEAKERpower present to know in terms of instructions per clock.

37:40SPEAKEROh wow.

37:41SPEAKEROkay.

37:42SPEAKERThey're talking like 15% plus.

37:43SPEAKERHuh?

37:44SPEAKERSo interesting.

37:45SPEAKERThat's I believe next year's chips are going to be the first ones on that.

37:48SPEAKEROkay.

37:49SPEAKERSo that might be worth keeping an eye on.

37:50SPEAKERThe other thing that's nice about AMD is that generally they keep motherboard chip sets

37:54SPEAKERlonger than Intel does.

37:55SPEAKERI've noticed, I've seen people talking about like, they've got an AMD motherboard from

37:59SPEAKERlike two generations of chip ago that they just bought the new chip and threw in there.

38:03SPEAKERThat is almost unheard of.

38:05SPEAKERIn a world where Intel has done two generations of chip set for the current socket, it is

38:11SPEAKERnice that they are support, continue to support stuff for a long time.

38:15SPEAKERYes, that is nice.

38:16SPEAKERFor sure.

38:17SPEAKERHere's an email from Brian, which is just a link to a CNET review for the new TCL eight

38:24SPEAKERseries.

38:25SPEAKEROh yeah.

38:26SPEAKERThe eight series.

38:27SPEAKERAnd his email underneath the link just says, Hey, look, mini led.

38:30SPEAKERI miss windows phone.

38:31SPEAKERThat's the entirety of the email.

38:34SPEAKERThat's a, that's a, this is the, if we reach the bottom of the barrel.

38:37SPEAKERI don't, I don't think we're going to talk about windows phone here unless you especially

38:40SPEAKERwant to.

38:41SPEAKERThis, I think this, the email is much more about the TV.

38:43SPEAKERI like to play in a hex and or a hex.

38:45SPEAKERYeah.

38:46SPEAKERYeah.

38:47SPEAKERYeah.

38:48SPEAKERI mean, I kind of didn't hate the windows phone.

38:49SPEAKERThere were some good ideas in that interface.

38:51SPEAKERLike the live tiles were pretty neat.

38:53SPEAKERIf they had rolled windows phone out when Android launched, we would be in a very different

38:58SPEAKERsituation now.

38:59SPEAKERLike as opposed to what, what did happen?

39:01SPEAKERWas it after it was two years late?

39:03SPEAKEROkay.

39:04SPEAKERLike they shipped, they shipped that w like Android was starting to ship in 2009 and didn't

39:08SPEAKERget real until like 2011 or 2012.

39:11SPEAKERReally think they could have captured.

39:12SPEAKERYes.

39:13SPEAKERMore of the market.

39:14SPEAKERA hundred percent.

39:15SPEAKERReally?

39:16SPEAKERYeah.

39:17SPEAKERI mean, it was kind of like Google in 2009.

39:18SPEAKERAll right.

39:19SPEAKERSure.

39:20SPEAKERYeah.

39:21SPEAKERIt's a bunch of weirdos and you know, open source perverts by an Android phones back

39:25SPEAKERthen.

39:26SPEAKERNick.

39:27SPEAKERWhat is this Linux?

39:28SPEAKERYeah.

39:29SPEAKERWe don't want to like, look.

39:30SPEAKERYeah.

39:31SPEAKERAnyway, I'm joking obviously.

39:32SPEAKERBut, but that was a real thing.

39:34SPEAKERYes.

39:35SPEAKERAnyway to get to the actual point of the email, he just links to this a CNET review of the

39:40SPEAKERnew TCL eight series.

39:41SPEAKERIs this a TV?

39:42SPEAKERYeah.

39:43SPEAKERIt's their new line of TVs.

39:44SPEAKEROkay.

39:45SPEAKERYeah.

39:46SPEAKERAnd I'm a wire who, I mean, I, to be fair, I've worked for the same company.

39:49SPEAKEROkay.

39:50SPEAKERBut I have always found his TV reviews to be amazingly thorough.

39:52SPEAKERI would say that he's right up there with like Robert Heron and some of those guys who

39:56SPEAKERhave been doing this for a really long time and are very good at it.

39:57SPEAKERYes.

39:58SPEAKERIf you really want to know about all of the inner workings of the TV, it's a, it's a fun

40:01SPEAKERread.

40:02SPEAKERI'm surprised that Wirecutter never hired him.

40:03SPEAKERYeah.

40:04SPEAKERYeah.

40:05SPEAKERHe seems very good from what I've seen.

40:06SPEAKERAnyway.

40:07SPEAKERI wanted to bring it up because I don't know if we talked about this during our screens

40:10SPEAKERepisode a few weeks ago, when we talked about micro LEDs.

40:14SPEAKERThat is a very different thing from mini led.

40:15SPEAKERSo micro led is when you, instead of having like a screen, like the LEDs are just the

40:20SPEAKERscreen.

40:21SPEAKERIt's like a jumbotron.

40:22SPEAKERThat's small in your house.

40:23SPEAKERMicro led is OLED, except potentially cheaper LEDs eventually.

40:26SPEAKERYeah.

40:27SPEAKERWell, it's the same kind of tech.

40:28SPEAKERI think it's mostly down to the types of materials used in the manufacturing and stuff like that.

40:32SPEAKERCause the LEDs use organic compounds and the micro led does not anyway.

40:36SPEAKERSo what's a mini led?

40:37SPEAKERMini led is remember last time how we complained about the marketing effort around quote, led

40:43SPEAKERTVs.

40:44SPEAKEROh yeah.

40:45SPEAKERDo you mean the LCDs with the LED backlight, how they're actually just LCDs, which is an

40:48SPEAKERancient technology.

40:49SPEAKERWell, hold on.

40:50SPEAKERThere are LCDs where you can turn on and off the backlight selectively, which is a good,

40:54SPEAKERthat is a good thing.

40:55SPEAKERThey're better than old LCDs, but they're still LCDs.

40:57SPEAKERYeah.

40:58SPEAKERLike they're not, I mean, come on, you know, the point of calling them led TVs is sex sells.

41:04SPEAKERYes, exactly.

41:05SPEAKERWhat's in a mini led.

41:06SPEAKERSo a mini led.

41:07SPEAKERSo are they just smaller leds behind the LCD screen?

41:11SPEAKERProbably that and more of them, but like an order of magnitude more.

41:14SPEAKERI think it's interesting if you look at this review, there are some diagrams in here that

41:17SPEAKERmake it pretty fascinating to look at like this, the visual that goes along with this,

41:22SPEAKERI think is really cool.

41:23SPEAKERDo they talk about LEDs per pixel?

41:25SPEAKERThey're not quite at that point yet, but it's getting closer.

41:27SPEAKERI want one to one, one led per pixel.

41:30SPEAKERThey're nowhere near that yet.

41:31SPEAKERThat's a micro led TV, I guess.

41:33SPEAKERI guess to put it in perspective, like, like cheapo LCDs only have backlights around the

41:36SPEAKERedges of the screen and they've got like what, some kind of filament stretched across the

41:40SPEAKERscreen to carry the light.

41:41SPEAKERThen you get like nicer led TVs have the LEDs pointing at you right through the screen,

41:46SPEAKERbut you still only get like on the order of like hundreds of led individual LEDs at best.

41:51SPEAKERAnd then you're familiar with local dimming.

41:52SPEAKERYeah.

41:53SPEAKERLocal dimming is the thing that makes LEDs not LCD TVs not look like they have blown

41:57SPEAKERout black.

41:58SPEAKERLike they dim specific LEDs based on what's on the image.

42:00SPEAKERSo you're not blowing out the dark parts of the scene.

42:02SPEAKERYeah.

42:03SPEAKERThis is basically that except times.

42:05SPEAKERThey also make the credits unreadable usually.

42:06SPEAKERRight.

42:07SPEAKERLike credits are the thing I've always heard where like, Oh, you get an ugly halo effect

42:10SPEAKERaround the text.

42:11SPEAKERRight.

42:12SPEAKEROr they just, or the text is so dim.

42:13SPEAKERYou can't, I had to turn it off.

42:14SPEAKERI had this on my Vizio TV.

42:15SPEAKERI just turned it off because it annoyed me.

42:16SPEAKERI guess the easiest way to explain this is if you, if you picture the backlight of like

42:20SPEAKERa few hundred LEDs behind your TV, they're increasing the resolution on that backlight.

42:25SPEAKERSo it's tons, it's like thousands of tiny LEDs instead of only a few hundred bigger

42:30SPEAKERones.

42:31SPEAKERThat sounds nice.

42:32SPEAKERSo what they're doing is backlighting.

42:33SPEAKERThey're creating a backlight image that roughly corresponds to the actual image on the screen.

42:37SPEAKERAs opposed to using OLED, where it just doesn't emit light.

42:40SPEAKERI mean, that is obviously a superior technology.

42:42SPEAKERIt's kind of the same price though.

42:44SPEAKERYeah.

42:45SPEAKERThat's the thing.

42:46SPEAKERThese things launched at a pretty steep price.

42:47SPEAKERHopefully it'll get cheaper or maybe OLEDs will just continue to getting cheaper and

42:51SPEAKERthis won't be an issue in five years.

42:52SPEAKEROh, this is always a good sign of a review that launched on December 20th.

42:56SPEAKERAnd he says at 6 43 AM four hours after the review was published, the price was dropped

43:00SPEAKER$400.

43:01SPEAKERThey dropped the price.

43:02SPEAKERJesus.

43:03SPEAKERBecause I believe he criticized the price in the original review.

43:05SPEAKERI mean, that seems right.

43:06SPEAKERAnyway.

43:07SPEAKERI mean, we'll play on the podcast, but if you go check out his review, which probably

43:10SPEAKERshouldn't be too hard to find, there's a link to kind of an explainer about many led or

43:15SPEAKERmany led.

43:16SPEAKEROh, that's interesting.

43:17SPEAKERAnd you basically can see, he kind of shows you a visualization of what the backlights

43:19SPEAKERlook like.

43:20SPEAKERAnd the backlight on an old led TV is just a big smeary black and white mess versus the

43:23SPEAKERbacklight on a mini led TV is kind of like a low res black and white close fuzzy approximation

43:29SPEAKERin black and white of the actual image you're seeing.

43:31SPEAKERI want nano led, Brad.

43:33SPEAKERI mean, we might be getting there it's like micro led, but even smaller.

43:36SPEAKERAnyway.

43:37SPEAKERI just thought it was interesting.

43:38SPEAKERCause I mean, you know, the upshot is he said it is the nicest looking LCD on the market.

43:41SPEAKERI miss windows phone too, Brian.

43:43SPEAKERYeah.

43:44SPEAKERSo there you go.

43:45SPEAKERYou know, when those phones had a headphone plugs, part of the spec, that's only cause

43:49SPEAKERit didn't have time to get rid of them.

43:50SPEAKERWell, it wasn't around long enough.

43:52SPEAKERThey didn't care about being thin.

43:53SPEAKERThey just wanted to be awesome.

43:54SPEAKERThat's right.

43:56SPEAKERLet's see.

43:57SPEAKERI have a Star Trek question here and I'm trying to find it.

43:59SPEAKERWhoever sent in the Star Trek question.

44:02SPEAKERI want a label to their email question.

44:04SPEAKEROh, nailed it.

44:05SPEAKERMaking it hard to find.

44:06SPEAKERHere it is.

44:07SPEAKERIt's from Tom.

44:08SPEAKERHi, Tom.

44:09SPEAKERI've been watching Star Trek, the next generation.

44:11SPEAKERAnd I was wondering what staple Star Trek tech such as transporter, a warp drive, replicator,

44:18SPEAKERet cetera.

44:19SPEAKERYou think we are closest to realizing and which ones are the least likely to ever come

44:23SPEAKERinto being pads, pads, pads, like the iPad looking for like the pad personal.

44:29SPEAKEROh that's right, that is the actual acronym, P-A-D-D. I don't remember what the acronym

44:33SPEAKERis for.

44:34SPEAKERI am a bad Star Trek fan.

44:35SPEAKERI forgot about that.

44:36SPEAKERDamn it, Brad.

44:37SPEAKERDespite owning a copy of the TNG technical manual.

44:39SPEAKERI had that when I was in high school.

44:40SPEAKERI didn't have it.

44:41SPEAKERI sat on the floor in the Walden books and read it over and over and then I got a copy

44:46SPEAKERmuch later in life.

44:47SPEAKERAnyway.

44:48SPEAKERYeah.

44:49SPEAKERI mean those things are basically iPads.

44:50SPEAKERRight?

44:51SPEAKERYeah.

44:52SPEAKERWe're there.

44:53SPEAKERWe have it.

44:54SPEAKERKind of all they are.

44:55SPEAKERThey see through though, which is cool.

44:56SPEAKEROh, that's right.

44:57SPEAKERThey were.

44:58SPEAKERI feel like in the movies, they're probably see-through.

45:00SPEAKERThat might be right.

45:01SPEAKERThey had a higher budget.

45:02SPEAKERYeah.

45:03SPEAKERThere.

45:04SPEAKERI feel like the tricorder is kind of realistic.

45:07SPEAKERThere are medical devices now that are like that.

45:09SPEAKERRight.

45:10SPEAKERYou're looking by an ultrasound that is like, looks like a handheld thing.

45:13SPEAKERYeah.

45:14SPEAKERAnd I think we've talked about it before.

45:15SPEAKERYou've talked especially about handheld like kind of collectors for different kinds of

45:18SPEAKERparticles.

45:19SPEAKEROh yeah.

45:20SPEAKERAnd like radiation detectors.

45:21SPEAKERYeah.

45:22SPEAKERLike we're not that far off from a device that can scan for all kinds of like physical

45:26SPEAKERanomaly.

45:27SPEAKERProbably something that does everything.

45:29SPEAKERWe're pretty far.

45:30SPEAKERYeah.

45:31SPEAKERYeah.

45:32SPEAKERI mean, that's probably.

45:33SPEAKERBut like you can have a box full of things that'll scan for all the things that a tricorder

45:35SPEAKERdoes.

45:36SPEAKERLike component versions of that technology exist.

45:37SPEAKERRight?

45:38SPEAKERYeah.

45:39SPEAKERThey just haven't been all thrown together yet.

45:40SPEAKERI'm trying to think.

45:41SPEAKERI don't think warp travel and impulse engines and transporters, those aren't going to happen

45:46SPEAKERin the time that we're going to care about them.

45:49SPEAKERProbably not.

45:50SPEAKERI feel like the replicator and holodeck is probably the least feasible.

45:54SPEAKERI think holodeck.

45:55SPEAKERBecause it relies, I mean, at least in that fiction, it relies on basically space magic.

45:59SPEAKERYeah.

46:00SPEAKERBut like they just early on, they trot out the fact that they've discovered that matter

46:02SPEAKERand energy are easily interchangeable.

46:06SPEAKERAnd that seems kind of farfetched.

46:07SPEAKERWell, that's only interchangeable because they have infinite power.

46:09SPEAKERI guess.

46:11SPEAKERI feel like, look, I feel like we'll get to a point where you can have a holodeck-esque

46:17SPEAKERVR experience.

46:18SPEAKEROh sure.

46:19SPEAKERYeah.

46:20SPEAKERYeah.

46:21SPEAKERI'm talking about, I mean, in that fiction, they literally replicate actual matter that

46:23SPEAKERyou can touch.

46:24SPEAKERYeah.

46:25SPEAKERNo, I know.

46:26SPEAKERI think what we'll do is have an approximation of what that touch would feel like.

46:29SPEAKERNot the actual creation of the matter.

46:32SPEAKERThrough like a weird motorized body suit or like more like a neural link?

46:37SPEAKERI think probably a body suit that stimulates nerves directly.

46:40SPEAKERInteresting.

46:41SPEAKERYeah.

46:42SPEAKERThat's what I've seen implies that that's probably more likely than putting a spike

46:45SPEAKERinto the back of your skull.

46:47SPEAKERYeah.

46:48SPEAKERI'm not going to buy a version one of the brain spike.

46:52SPEAKERThis is not a Verhoeven movie.

46:54SPEAKERNo.

46:55SPEAKERYeah.

46:56SPEAKERI think that's good.

46:57SPEAKERI think that's right.

46:58SPEAKERYeah.

46:59SPEAKERI don't think food replication.

47:00SPEAKERI like making food.

47:01SPEAKERI guess.

47:02SPEAKERI mean, would you really turn down a replicator though?

47:04SPEAKERI mean.

47:05SPEAKERIf it was an option?

47:06SPEAKERDepends on how the food.

47:08SPEAKERYou know what?

47:09SPEAKERYou know, I went back and re-watched Force Awakens and Last Jedi before the new Star

47:13SPEAKERWars came out, which we're not going to talk about in this context at all.

47:16SPEAKERYes.

47:17SPEAKERAre you going to talk about one quarter portion?

47:18SPEAKERNo.

47:19SPEAKERI'm going to talk about the scene in Force Awakens when Rey gets the food.

47:23SPEAKERAnd she puts the water in it?

47:25SPEAKEROh, the one quarter portion.

47:26SPEAKERYeah, yeah.

47:27SPEAKERThat's what he gives her.

47:28SPEAKERYeah.

47:29SPEAKERThat is the coolest practical effect in all of those movies, I think.

47:30SPEAKERThat's pretty neat.

47:31SPEAKERYeah.

47:32SPEAKERBecause that's a real thing.

47:33SPEAKERIs it really?

47:34SPEAKERYeah.

47:35SPEAKERIt's a practical.

47:36SPEAKEROh, wow.

47:37SPEAKERIt looks very convincing.

47:38SPEAKERI've talked to a couple of people who worked in effects stuff since I saw this and I saw

47:41SPEAKERthat again.

47:42SPEAKERI was like, "Hey, do you know how they did that?"

47:43SPEAKERYeah.

47:44SPEAKERI'm like, "No.

47:45SPEAKERI don't know how they did that."

47:46SPEAKERNobody's figured that one out?

47:47SPEAKERI mean, I'm sure it was in Cinefix or something, but I don't know how it was done.

47:50SPEAKERIt was cool.

47:51SPEAKERYeah.

47:52SPEAKERI mean, I don't know the technology, but we can get that technology.

47:54SPEAKERThe one quarter portion technology.

47:56SPEAKERI think so.

47:57SPEAKERI don't know.

47:58SPEAKERThat may be.

47:59SPEAKERBlue bread, I don't think is better than the blue milk, man.

48:00SPEAKERIt sounds very appetizing to me, personally.

48:04SPEAKERSo no go on warp travel for you?

48:06SPEAKERLook.

48:07SPEAKERI mean, NASA has the Department of Warp Travel, but every time you talk about that, then people

48:13SPEAKERwho work at NASA are like, "Those guys are cranks.

48:15SPEAKERDon't listen to them."

48:16SPEAKERHow the hell do they get funding?

48:18SPEAKERYeah.

48:19SPEAKERLook, I think it wouldn't surprise me if we send a laser powered probe, like a Charlie

48:27SPEAKERStrauss kind of space magic laser powered probe to Alpha Centauri or something like

48:33SPEAKERthat in our lifetime.

48:34SPEAKERWow.

48:35SPEAKERBecause if you think it would be like you do laser sales, you can continue accelerating

48:38SPEAKERthem all the way.

48:39SPEAKERYou can decelerate them when you get to the other side.

48:40SPEAKERSure.

48:41SPEAKERIt could be something that leaves before we die, but probably doesn't arrive before we

48:45SPEAKERdie.

48:46SPEAKEROkay.

48:47SPEAKERSure.

48:48SPEAKERLet's see if we can get any data back.

48:49SPEAKERYeah.

48:50SPEAKERAnd also the 200 years it'll take to traverse the distance.

48:52SPEAKERYes.

48:53SPEAKERRight.

48:54SPEAKERYeah.

48:55SPEAKERLet's see.

48:56SPEAKERGuillaume wrote in.

48:57SPEAKEROkay.

48:58SPEAKERAnd said, "Did the tech giants claim their cloud data centers are carbon neutral?

49:01SPEAKERIs that really true?

49:02SPEAKERHow green is our cloud future?"

49:04SPEAKERSo carbon neutral in this case is talking about the power consumed, right?

49:08SPEAKERYeah.

49:09SPEAKERYeah.

49:10SPEAKERI mean, I can be carbon neutral today if I buy my electricity from a carbon neutral provider

49:14SPEAKERin the Bay Area.

49:15SPEAKEROh, sure.

49:16SPEAKERThey offer that choice, actually.

49:17SPEAKERYeah.

49:18SPEAKERIt's like a power bill.

49:19SPEAKERIn fact, I paid our power bill right before this.

49:20SPEAKERYeah.

49:21SPEAKERI forget how they phrase it, but you have the bulk of the bill is just sort of standard

49:25SPEAKERpower and then there's some itemized line that's like-

49:28SPEAKERYou can buy wind power from some place down here to Hachubby or something.

49:30SPEAKERYeah.

49:31SPEAKERThey don't say what kind of power it is, but they imply that it's like third party green

49:34SPEAKERpower that's being added into the grid that you're paying for, and I think you pay more

49:38SPEAKERfor it.

49:39SPEAKERWell, in the old days, you could buy internet from COVAD across AT&T's lines.

49:43SPEAKERThey leased lines from AT&T, or you can buy Sonic internet from across AT&T lines in certain

49:47SPEAKERparts of the Bay Area now.

49:49SPEAKERYou can buy green power that's generated greenly and it's transferred across PG&E's network.

49:54SPEAKERYeah.

49:55SPEAKERI mean, the bigger question, though, is how power efficient are those data centers?

49:58SPEAKERHow much are they actually using?

49:59SPEAKERBecause power generation and usage is a zero-sum situation, right?

50:03SPEAKERWell, I mean-

50:04SPEAKERLike the more power they're using, the less available power there is for other applications

50:08SPEAKERthat are perhaps less frivolous.

50:10SPEAKERWell, but at the same time, there's very little storage built into the power grid right now,

50:16SPEAKERso whatever's being generated at any given moment is also being consumed at that same

50:20SPEAKERmoment.

50:21SPEAKEROkay.

50:22SPEAKERThat's fair.

50:23SPEAKERSo if they have solar panels on the roof of their data centers that are generating all

50:25SPEAKERthe power needed for the data center, that's neutral as far as I'm concerned.

50:30SPEAKEROkay.

50:31SPEAKERYeah.

50:32SPEAKERI mean, does it account for the spin-up cost of making that hardware and then parting it

50:38SPEAKERout when you're done and getting the panels online?

50:41SPEAKERProbably not.

50:42SPEAKERHeat dissipation?

50:43SPEAKERHeat dissipation usually goes straight into rivers.

50:45SPEAKERIt's fine.

50:46SPEAKERThe fish love that.

50:47SPEAKERIt makes the eggs extra-

50:48SPEAKERI bet.

50:49SPEAKERExtra hearty.

50:50SPEAKERAll right, Will.

50:51SPEAKERLast email.

50:52SPEAKERIt's from Nick in Chicago.

50:53SPEAKEROkay.

50:54SPEAKERAre you ready for this?

50:55SPEAKERHit me.

50:56SPEAKEROkay.

50:57SPEAKERI upgraded to an NVMe SSD for my gaming computer over Black Friday, and I've been thinking

50:59SPEAKERabout the PS5 and Series X's claims about SSD performance.

51:03SPEAKERAre the things they're talking about available to current SSD owners on PC?

51:07SPEAKERIs the tech that much different than current SSD capabilities, specifically the claims

51:10SPEAKERabout being able to reduce game sizes by a huge amount, dramatically lowering loading

51:15SPEAKERtimes, fine grain access to what data is installed, et cetera?

51:19SPEAKERAll of these things sound super cool for someone who games mostly on console and little on

51:24SPEAKERPC.

51:25SPEAKERThe Wired Reveal article even talks about taking advantage of these huge changes to

51:28SPEAKERchange the way games are developed, removing Mass Effect elevators and the like.

51:32SPEAKERCan games really be designed with these SSDs in mind if the PC hard drive still exists?

51:37SPEAKERI think that ... The big thing about designing for SSDs is that you assume that the defaults

51:44SPEAKERare SSDs.

51:45SPEAKERRight.

51:46SPEAKERNot just that the defaults are SSDs, but that's what it's going to run on, and it's never

51:50SPEAKERgoing to run on a spinning platter.

51:51SPEAKERYeah.

51:52SPEAKERThat's been the big question to me about how they're going to handle PC ports in this new

51:55SPEAKERconsole era.

51:57SPEAKERMy bet is if you look at Steam survey data, you can assume that people have SSDs now.

52:01SPEAKERYou think so?

52:02SPEAKERYeah.

52:03SPEAKERThey've gotten cheap enough.

52:04SPEAKERIf you want to get your terabyte drive for under 200 bucks, there's no reason not to

52:08SPEAKERget an SSD for your PC at this point.

52:09SPEAKERAt that point, that literally becomes a line item in the hardware requirements on the game

52:13SPEAKERon Steam, right?

52:14SPEAKERYeah.

52:15SPEAKERIt's like, "Must have an SSD."

52:16SPEAKERThat's exactly it.

52:17SPEAKERBut again, though, even these newer NVMe drives are dramatically faster than your old SATA

52:22SPEAKER3 SSDs.

52:24SPEAKERThey're not that dramatically faster.

52:26SPEAKERThe difference is that the throughput is the memory performance and not the interface,

52:30SPEAKERright?

52:31SPEAKERThis is the bottleneck episode this week, but you're looking at a change from millisecond

52:37SPEAKERto nanosecond access time from a physical disk to an SSD.

52:43SPEAKERThe throughput is important, but really the random access time is the thing that's the

52:48SPEAKERbig deal on SSDs.

52:49SPEAKERYeah.

52:50SPEAKERThat may be the case.

52:51SPEAKERI mean, unless you get a game that is just like hyper-designed around streaming assets

52:54SPEAKERat a certain speed.

52:55SPEAKERWell, Spider-Man is the perfect example, right?

52:57SPEAKERThey based the core game mechanic of swinging through the world based on the access time

53:01SPEAKERfor the hard drive and the PS4.

53:02SPEAKERRight.

53:03SPEAKERThat's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

53:04SPEAKERIt seems like if they're making a multi-platform game that'll have to sell on PC, they might

53:08SPEAKERhave to be a little more conscious of that sort of thing.

53:10SPEAKERBut I really think they're just going to say, "Hey, you have to have an SSD," and they'll

53:13SPEAKERbase it.

53:16SPEAKERThe difference between a slightly longer load time on, say, an NVMe PCI Express SSD versus

53:24SPEAKERa SATA 6G SSD is going to be the difference between a fast hard drive and a slow hard

53:30SPEAKERdrive, not the difference between an SSD and not an SSD.

53:33SPEAKEREven though the stated maximums on those interfaces are massively different.

53:38SPEAKERBut still the flash memory isn't that much faster than SATA 6G.

53:40SPEAKERThat's what I'm saying.

53:41SPEAKERThat's what I'm saying.

53:42SPEAKERLike the on-paper in some cases.

53:43SPEAKERYeah.

53:44SPEAKERYeah.

53:45SPEAKERSo, yeah.

53:46SPEAKERI mean, I'm interested in seeing...

53:47SPEAKERIt's kind of like Stadia, right?

53:48SPEAKERI'm interested in seeing what people do when the constraints change, when the bottlenecks

53:53SPEAKERmove.

53:54SPEAKERLike with Stadia, you have infinite compute and low latency from the machine to the data

54:01SPEAKERcenter to the server.

54:03SPEAKERBut then there's high latency from the renderer to the controller and the eyes.

54:07SPEAKERSo it's weird when that stuff changes.

54:11SPEAKERIt presents interesting opportunities for game developers.

54:14SPEAKERAnd yeah, I want to play Spider-Man where you can swing it like 300 miles an hour down

54:17SPEAKERthe...

54:18SPEAKERThey should put that out.

54:19SPEAKERMake a spider paste out of yourself.

54:20SPEAKERPut that out as a tech demo.

54:21SPEAKERYeah.

54:22SPEAKERLike, "Hey, look, it works.

54:24SPEAKERAll right.

54:25SPEAKERI'm going to call that the last email."

54:26SPEAKERThat sounds like a good last email.

54:27SPEAKERYeah.

54:28SPEAKERThanks for writing in, everyone.

54:29SPEAKERYeah.

54:30SPEAKERIf you have emails, we do these once a month.

54:32SPEAKERThe email address is techpod@content.town.

54:35SPEAKERAnd I guess that'll do it for us this week.

54:37SPEAKERAll right.

54:38SPEAKERMan, I wish I was playing Half-Life Alyx.

54:39SPEAKERYeah.

54:40SPEAKERI'm excited to see that.

54:41SPEAKERMe too.

54:42SPEAKERDid you just get to play the first part over and over on different headsets?

54:44SPEAKERIs that how they did it?

54:45SPEAKERI played the first three and a half hours of the game because they wanted us to get comfortable

54:48SPEAKERwith mechanics.

54:49SPEAKERSo it's learning how to throw in stuff and how to reload the guns and stuff to the point

54:55SPEAKERthat you could do it reliably in a fight.

54:56SPEAKERMuscle memory.

54:57SPEAKERYeah.

54:58SPEAKERAnd then the section that we replayed over and over again was like a 20-minute segue section

55:03SPEAKERonce you kind of got into the real combat portion of the game.

55:05SPEAKERI mean, I don't know how long that game is, but that sounds like a pretty big chunk.

55:08SPEAKERI think they said like 10 or 15 hours.

55:10SPEAKERThat sounds like a-

55:11SPEAKERIt's like a quarter.

55:12SPEAKERPretty solid chunk of that game.

55:13SPEAKERYeah.

55:14SPEAKERSo I played a little bit more while Norm was interviewing people and got through the one-third

55:18SPEAKERarc, they said, basically.

55:20SPEAKERHeadcrabs are...

55:21SPEAKERIt's way scarier in VR.

55:23SPEAKERYeah.

55:24SPEAKERI bet they are because I feel like in the old games, they're a little bit comical.

55:28SPEAKERThere's something a little bit goofy about the headcrab, as much as it's trying to be

55:32SPEAKERthe face hugger from Alien, which is one of the most horrifying things in the history

55:35SPEAKERof cinema.

55:36SPEAKERYeah.

55:37SPEAKERWhen one of the scientists is wearing a headcrab that's been de-beaked as a hat, it tells you

55:42SPEAKERhow they felt.

55:43SPEAKERYes.

55:44SPEAKERI feel like the headcrab is sort of the joke version of the face hugger.

55:48SPEAKERI always thought of Half-Life as like an exploration and shooting game and not really a scary game.

55:53SPEAKERYeah.

55:54SPEAKERRaven Homicide.

55:55SPEAKERYes.

55:56SPEAKERAnd this was very scary compared to previous.

55:58SPEAKERInteresting.

55:59SPEAKEROkay.

56:00SPEAKERAnd just because the combat's more physical, it kind of slows it down a little bit, which

56:06SPEAKERwas not necessarily a bad thing.

56:08SPEAKERI feel like people who maybe are bad at shooters will be better at this.

56:11SPEAKERHuh.

56:12SPEAKEROkay.

56:13SPEAKERI'm excited for them to go.

56:14SPEAKERYeah.

56:15SPEAKERCool.

56:16SPEAKERI'm excited to play more.

56:17SPEAKERYes.

56:18SPEAKERI'm excited to record another episode next week.

56:19SPEAKERYeah.

56:20SPEAKERWell, I don't know what we'll talk about.

56:21SPEAKERI've got some ideas.

56:22SPEAKEROkay.

56:23SPEAKERWell, I'm Will.

56:24SPEAKERI'm Brad.

56:25SPEAKERSee you all next week.

56:26SPEAKERHey, we haven't said this in a while, but if you like the podcast, chucking a review

56:28SPEAKERon iTunes helps us a lot.

56:30SPEAKERAlgorithmically, it helps.

56:32SPEAKERAnd it turns out telling your friends helps.

56:33SPEAKERWhen I posted my Game of the Year list at giantbomb.com, people were like, "Holy shit,

56:38SPEAKERWill and Brad are doing a podcast?"

56:39SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yes, Brad and Will have been doing a podcast."

56:42SPEAKERWe tweet about it every week.

56:43SPEAKERYou can follow us on Twitter.

56:44SPEAKERSaying it's not enough to just do the thing.

56:46SPEAKERYou have to promote yourself.

56:47SPEAKERWe have to promote it a little bit, I guess.

56:49SPEAKERI'm @WillSmith on the Twitters.

56:51SPEAKERI'm @BradSchumacher.

56:52SPEAKERWe'll see you guys next week.