Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed
Speaker 2: Zeitron and this week we're joined again by the wonderful
Speaker 2: Steve Burke of Gamers. Next us. How are you doing, Steve?
Speaker 3: Doing well?
Speaker 2: How about you doing great? See you? We're just at
Speaker 2: computext right.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, we're over there for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: So for the listeners who don't know, because this is
Speaker 2: a fair amount, you don't know every conference. So what
Speaker 2: is computext and what makes it so important?
Speaker 3: Copy text? Is the I would I think it's the
Speaker 3: largest computer hardware and computer technology trade show. So that's
Speaker 3: hosted in Taipei every year, and it's it's like a
Speaker 3: much better CES. People may know CS.
Speaker 2: And is it more focused on enterprise stuff or consumer stuff?
Speaker 3: This year, weirdly, they AI commandeered the entire main hall,
Speaker 3: so there were actually there are a lot of pissed
Speaker 3: off consumer hardware manufacturers who were sort of evicted and
Speaker 3: driven out of the main hall and put into the
Speaker 3: lesser one with consumer hardware.
Speaker 2: What were they even showing with the AI stuff as well?
Speaker 3: I mean one company had an AI computer case?
Speaker 2: Oh how did that? What's the AI do?
Speaker 3: Absolutely no idea sick.
Speaker 2: It's so cool that this is absorbed, so it's also
Speaker 2: kind of brutal, that's literally absorbing space. Yes, did you
Speaker 2: see anything cool that though, anything you're excited about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff the I mean
Speaker 3: there was some immersion cooling, which is always nice to see,
Speaker 3: like where they actually literally immersed the system, you know,
Speaker 3: in fluid for cooling. There was a thermociphon from Nocto,
Speaker 3: which is just a really cool use of it's another
Speaker 3: cooling technology. Lots of computer case and cooling solution development.
Speaker 3: And then on the GPU side, I mean N Video
Speaker 3: sort of buried its fifty sixty launch and then AMD
Speaker 3: more formally announced the information for its ninety sixty XT.
Speaker 3: And both of those are sort of the slightly more
Speaker 3: affordable consumer class GPUs.
Speaker 2: Yet so in Video also was doing some funny business
Speaker 2: with you recently you did that wonderful video. So walk
Speaker 2: us through what happened that because they tried to big
Speaker 2: dog you so to speak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I mean the problem we had with them
Speaker 3: we talked about was for several months there had been
Speaker 3: this I felt sort of pressure from Nvideo with where
Speaker 3: so N Video for contact with people, and Video sends
Speaker 3: out GP review samples. We and other reviewers are not
Speaker 3: entitled to them. That's fine, we can buy them ourselves
Speaker 3: as well, but they send out samples for product reviews.
Speaker 3: And in the past, and Video has been in hot
Speaker 3: water for asking another outlet called the hard Run Box
Speaker 3: to I believe the quote was, or the paraphrase was,
Speaker 3: change your editorial direction. Yeah, and so that was several
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 2: And what did they what did they ask them to
Speaker 2: do back then?
Speaker 3: Back then it was seeking more coverage of real time
Speaker 3: rate tracing in video games, which at the time was
Speaker 3: more or less only found in any kind of meaningful
Speaker 3: performance on in video hardware. But also and the reason
Speaker 3: at least we weren't ready to fully do testing for
Speaker 3: real time rate tracing yet was because it just it
Speaker 3: wasn't ready yet. I mean, there weren't that many games
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 2: You couldn't really test it because you couldn't use it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they launched and if I remember correctly,
Speaker 3: there were actually zero games that supported this technology and
Speaker 3: the only thing available were sort of tech demos. And
Speaker 3: so anyway that that was what they wanted, then they
Speaker 3: kind of went away, didn't That's at least as far
Speaker 3: as we know, publicly didn't try to push reviewers in
Speaker 3: a particular direction with their narrative or their editorial style.
Speaker 3: And then over the last several months we were getting
Speaker 3: this pressure of basically so we do a bunch of
Speaker 3: interviews with engineers and technical people at Nvidia, and I
Speaker 3: felt they were starting to use that as a lever
Speaker 3: to be like, oh, it sure seems like you like
Speaker 3: talking to the thermal engineers. It'd be a shame of
Speaker 3: something happened.
Speaker 2: And you did that very long one over within video, right,
Speaker 2: you went and kind of looked at how some with
Speaker 2: stuff worked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we did. I mean they're great educational content.
Speaker 3: The engineers are awesome, and I've spent years working with
Speaker 3: mostly people who are in different departments or don't work
Speaker 3: there anymore to get in video on the same page
Speaker 3: where I'm like, look, we're not looking for a marketing
Speaker 3: puff piece. We're looking for actual engineers who just want
Speaker 3: to talk about the stuff they make and people can
Speaker 3: learn about it. But it's not like, obviously, yes, it
Speaker 3: can support the problem act by nature of if it's
Speaker 3: good and the engineers explain it well, then people will
Speaker 3: like it. But the objective is not just like come
Speaker 3: on our show and use us as a platform to
Speaker 3: sell things. We want engineers, not marketers. Yeah, and so
Speaker 3: that was great. And the like I said, lever that
Speaker 3: it became was they wanted more in video on more
Speaker 3: coverage of this thing called MFG, which is multi frame generation,
Speaker 3: which is something that Jensen Huan, the CEO, talks about
Speaker 3: on stage as being part of their technology suite that
Speaker 3: is a big surprise AI accelerated that effectively multiplies the
Speaker 3: frame rate to be used as a smoothing technology.
Speaker 2: So it's different. Is this different to like DLSS and
Speaker 2: things like that, or is that.
Speaker 3: It is part of the DLSS or the Deep Learned
Speaker 3: Super Sampling Technology suite. So it's sort of it's it's
Speaker 3: almost like a subset of DLSS.
Speaker 2: Right, and so it basically just looks better at higher resolution.
Speaker 2: It fills in the frames. I'm guessing just trying to simplify.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So yes, the simplest version of it is MFG
Speaker 3: sort of interpolates frames, so it's able to add in
Speaker 3: or insert additional effectively artificial or generated frames if you're
Speaker 3: trying to be charitable with it, that are not literally
Speaker 3: built by the game engine, and so the GPU is
Speaker 3: working with its own software to construct these frames and
Speaker 3: construct pixels based on what it thinks is going to
Speaker 3: happen next. And we've actually tested it and there's situations
Speaker 3: where it's not bad. There's situations where it's awful, like
Speaker 3: with any technology. But what it does is on a chart,
Speaker 3: if you just look at the number that comes out
Speaker 3: the so called frame rate or the amount of frames
Speaker 3: in a given period of time, that looks higher with
Speaker 3: this technology, but it's not measuring the same thing as
Speaker 3: something without this technology. So it's effectively, you know, you're
Speaker 3: comparing apples and oranges if you try to put real
Speaker 3: frames that are rendered in the traditional way up against
Speaker 3: these generated AI frames that are effectively guessing at what
Speaker 3: they should look.
Speaker 2: Like, and do they look bad as well?
Speaker 3: Like they can they can look really bad. I mean
Speaker 3: we've done some testing where in some of the games
Speaker 3: it's just like text for example, will will get completely
Speaker 3: garbled text on screen interface interface issues will draw the
Speaker 3: interface in the wrong area. You could have really.
Speaker 2: Sanely bad for like any RPG of any kind or
Speaker 2: any kind of like Twitch I own.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like.
Speaker 2: Anything you'd be doing EVA would be ruined by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's scenarios where it works, Okay, But the
Speaker 3: RPG example you brought up, so Final Fantasy was one
Speaker 3: of the games we test did where there's just areas.
Speaker 3: I mean, it just I personally would turn it off.
Speaker 3: It looks worse and I'd rather have a lower quote
Speaker 3: unquote frame rate than have this sort of potential blurry
Speaker 3: mess every now and then.
Speaker 2: So strange low qualities. Well, it's just a very strange
Speaker 2: thing to push out the door.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the you know, I think sort of finished
Speaker 3: the editorial narrative. They know, I mean, it's fine, but
Speaker 3: I'll finish that first and I'll come back to your
Speaker 3: account you just make because that's also interesting.
Speaker 2: But on the.
Speaker 3: Editorial side, they wanted more coverage of MFG, and we
Speaker 3: disagreed from an objective standpoint. You know, I kind of
Speaker 3: made the case of them several times, over several calls,
Speaker 3: over several months of why we think it It just
Speaker 3: doesn't belong on the same charts as normal benchmarking, normal
Speaker 3: objective testing, and so there was, Yeah, there's just a disagreement,
Speaker 3: which is fine. The problem came in when I felt
Speaker 3: repeatedly on various calls with the N Video people that
Speaker 3: they were almost sort of holding hostage the idea of
Speaker 3: working with engineers again, where it's well, the way we're
Speaker 3: able to make this happen is by you covering things
Speaker 3: like MFG. You know, sort of that type of conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so. And they mentioned something about like budgets
Speaker 2: in the video.
Speaker 3: I remember, yeah, I mean there was like discussion of
Speaker 3: one of the times specifically, the statement was that this
Speaker 3: is how we can secure budget for these types of things,
Speaker 3: and like to be clear for listeners, we don't take
Speaker 3: money for interviews. Yeah yeah, And in fact, I've paid
Speaker 3: now over five figures to visit N Video on numerous
Speaker 3: occasions for said interviews. Personally, like I'm paid.
Speaker 2: And I can say this from the PR side, and
Speaker 2: not working not work with A video or anyone associated
Speaker 2: five all that. It's like, no one talks about budgets.
Speaker 2: No one is like, oh I can't visit a journalist
Speaker 2: due to budget, and certainly not in Video, a company
Speaker 2: that had thirty nine billion dollars I believe in revenue
Speaker 2: just in the data cent a portion.
Speaker 3: Of classical multi trillion dollar marketing cap. I think if
Speaker 3: I try to take Devil's advocate at maybe there's some
Speaker 3: internal budgeting whatever, like the marketing department needs to budget
Speaker 3: time from the engineering department or something. But we're talking
Speaker 3: like a couple hours of time max normally, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: especially when I'm traveling to them. So it just seemed
Speaker 3: like I don't know it. I didn't buy it. And
Speaker 3: also that was only one of the numerous UH calls,
Speaker 3: you know, like that the defensible reason for them changed.
Speaker 3: It felt like each time where it's like, oh, let's
Speaker 3: try this angle, let's try this angle.
Speaker 2: So did they end up blocking you? They just how
Speaker 2: did that situation resolve itself?
Speaker 3: I have not spoken with anyone there since we posted
Speaker 3: our video talking about it. And part of the challenge
Speaker 3: with posting that video is, you know, it's like, the
Speaker 3: first couple of times this came up, I assumed that
Speaker 3: it was just sort of okay, maybe the guy phrased
Speaker 3: it ron you know, I've worked with these people for
Speaker 3: a while and maybe just came out wrong. After a
Speaker 3: couple of times, I did call one of my reps
Speaker 3: after the meeting where they kind of pushed this, you know,
Speaker 3: you testing this technology that you think is not appropriate
Speaker 3: to share on charts with competitors. That's how we get
Speaker 3: you these interviews. I called a rep and said, you know, hey, this,
Speaker 3: if you guys say this to people, this is going
Speaker 3: to be taken the wrong way. And like, I'm still
Speaker 3: assuming it's not meant this way. But but if I
Speaker 3: hear this again, right, like it's I'm did I have
Speaker 3: to start assuming it's it's the way it sounds. And
Speaker 3: it did come up again. And part of the challenge
Speaker 3: with making the video we made was, you know, we
Speaker 3: want to blow the whistle on it in case other
Speaker 3: people are facing that pressure, and also in case consumers
Speaker 3: are watching or reading content which may be influenced without
Speaker 3: their knowledge. The problem is, I think en video may
Speaker 3: now be in a situation where let's just assume everybody
Speaker 3: makes up and it's fine. At some point, I don't
Speaker 3: know that they will ever be able to put an
Speaker 3: engineer on cam RA any time of the near future
Speaker 3: with anybody without the audience questioning it. And for good reason,
Speaker 3: because that was what we felt was being used as
Speaker 3: the lever against us. Yeah, and so it's just kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know. We tried to, you know, I
Speaker 3: explained to them several times why this is a problem
Speaker 3: and why the phrasing is a problem, and the more
Speaker 3: you hear it, the more it's like, Okay, I mean
Speaker 3: at some point, like I think you're saying what it
Speaker 3: sounds like you're saying, I'm going to stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good that you did it, though, because it's
Speaker 2: GM's got over a million subscribers, so who knows what
Speaker 2: they're doing too much smaller outlets as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and that's what I'm really concerned about
Speaker 3: is I've had conversations with Nvidia in the past that
Speaker 3: will probably get into in a future video, but about
Speaker 3: their strategy for newer creators, and I don't like what
Speaker 3: I've heard. I mean, it sounds very much like we're
Speaker 3: a're gonna sort of try and shape these newer creators.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think the problem is as especially
Speaker 3: old guard media, as in people like OG's before US
Speaker 3: retire or move to other industries, there's openings to change
Speaker 3: how media interfaces with these companies in general, because you've
Speaker 3: got newer people who don't have the historical background with
Speaker 3: these companies to know what to expect, and so it's
Speaker 3: easier to kind of slowly creep that goalpost where it's
Speaker 3: it's less independence and it's more marketing arm of the company.
Speaker 3: And that's what I'm really worried about, is if they
Speaker 3: get in any of these companies with newer creators early
Speaker 3: and are able to change the expectancy of the relationship,
Speaker 3: so change it from independent reviewer analyzing large companies device
Speaker 3: into more of a hey, we're all friends, we're all
Speaker 3: working together to try and benefit the consumer. When if
Speaker 3: you're talking about a multi trillion dollar company that their
Speaker 3: motives are far different from like the guy in his
Speaker 3: bedroom who's trying to do hardware reviews.
Speaker 2: It's just so weird as well, because they're already so successful.
Speaker 2: Is this history? It sounds like historically in Vidia has
Speaker 2: been a bit draconian like this, though not necessarily pressuring
Speaker 2: in this way.
Speaker 3: I mean, I certainly think and Vidia is one of
Speaker 3: the most vindictive companies in the space. They the stories
Speaker 3: we've heard and told in some instance of their partners,
Speaker 3: not reviewers, but actual business partners like board vendors, people
Speaker 3: who make the video cards that the Nvidio GPS go on.
Speaker 3: Those stories would seem to indicate a sort of vindictiveness
Speaker 3: can give an example, Yeah, allocation. So GPU allocation is
Speaker 3: the concept of how many of a high demand GPU
Speaker 3: can you, as a partner get to then attached to
Speaker 3: a product to then sell to a consumer. And there's
Speaker 3: a limited amount of these because they're going to sell
Speaker 3: one hundred percent of them, And allocation is typically measured
Speaker 3: by percent, So company A might get twenty five percent,
Speaker 3: Company B might get five percent of the GPU supply
Speaker 3: whatever that is. And that allocation, we've been told in
Speaker 3: the past, has been used also as sort of a lever.
Speaker 3: And so an example would be back in the EVGA days,
Speaker 3: which Evga sort of famously.
Speaker 2: That was a graphics called company.
Speaker 3: Correct. Yeah, they they were in video's number one partner,
Speaker 3: and they were so Nvidio favored that they only made
Speaker 3: Nvidia video cards. They did not work with any competitors, right,
Speaker 3: and they famously cut that relationship publicly and we ran
Speaker 3: a story about that. But one of the things that
Speaker 3: they were unhappy about was Nvidia slowly tightening the screws,
Speaker 3: which is a direct quote from an Nvidia pm I
Speaker 3: spoke to one. Slowly tightening the tight end the screws
Speaker 3: is the quote, but on what the partners were allowed
Speaker 3: to do with their products, and slowly over time they're
Speaker 3: losing some of this creative freedom.
Speaker 2: What did you say, they lose creative freedom? Like, what
Speaker 2: are they being constrained to do?
Speaker 3: One that's public is we did an interview with a
Speaker 3: famous over clocker who used to work for or EVGA.
Speaker 3: Kingpin is his username and his name is on video
Speaker 3: cards that are world famous. We did a video with
Speaker 3: him and he talked about how he wanted to add
Speaker 3: two power connectors to a card to basically make it
Speaker 3: more fun to overclock with for consumers. And so it'd
Speaker 3: be to be able to pull more power, and it
Speaker 3: would also be able to do so safer because the
Speaker 3: current power connector has this issue of burning and catching
Speaker 3: on fire sometimes, right, so, and so he wanted to
Speaker 3: do two of them to kind of resolve some of that.
Speaker 3: And in the public discussion we had with Kingpin and
Speaker 3: the video he said paraphrasing, but the conversation was he
Speaker 3: said they wouldn't allow it, or they restricted it or
Speaker 3: something like that, And I said who is they? And
Speaker 3: he said they, Yeah, like we we there was only
Speaker 3: one day there could.
Speaker 2: Be who could it be?
Speaker 3: Yeah, But there's plenty of examples like that, where the
Speaker 3: another one would be a couple generations ago. The cheaper cards,
Speaker 3: like the two hundred three hundred dollars models they were
Speaker 3: those models were difficult for the partners to actually make
Speaker 3: and still make any money. And so there were times
Speaker 3: where we were told about how this MSRP level video card,
Speaker 3: meaning the number that in video says is the MSRP,
Speaker 3: that would only exist for a fixed period of time
Speaker 3: because it was simply impossible to afford to make it.
Speaker 3: But and Video really wanted them to exist at this
Speaker 3: certain MSRP. It allows them to advertise a lower price,
Speaker 3: and so they're pushed to make these cards that allows
Speaker 3: them to potentially get things like more access to allocation
Speaker 3: or you know whatever privilege they may get.
Speaker 2: So on a much larger level, what do you think
Speaker 2: is going on within Video as a company right now?
Speaker 2: I'm not asking for stock analysis like that, totally not that,
Speaker 2: but just as a company that both makes can zumographics
Speaker 2: cards and undepinds whatever the AI thing is, how like,
Speaker 2: what do you think is going on there right now?
Speaker 3: I think there's definitely a focus on AI to try
Speaker 3: and get money. I mean, there's a Jensen Juan was
Speaker 3: in an interview I don't know last year sometime, I think,
Speaker 3: or earlier this year, and made a coment about how
Speaker 3: they use AI to write their own driver software now
Speaker 3: or their own software or something like that. And you
Speaker 3: know this is this is the number one focus. It's
Speaker 3: what they're making the most I guess investor money on,
Speaker 3: so they're focused on it. The concern I have is
Speaker 3: it's one thing to sort of let the consumer hardware
Speaker 3: side dwindle or get less competitive effort. It's another thing too,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, and sort of drag the entire industry
Speaker 3: down with it as they shift focus to the higher
Speaker 3: revenue AI side.
Speaker 2: Right when you say drag them down, how do you mean?
Speaker 3: I mean things like trying to in my opinion, control
Speaker 3: the media narrative and shape it like that. That to
Speaker 3: me goes beyond Okay, we don't care much about consumer
Speaker 3: We're going to focus on making money with AI. That
Speaker 3: gets into we are going to actively damage the credibility
Speaker 3: of independent media and also potentially harm consumers who are
Speaker 3: influenced by that media, which has been shaped with a
Speaker 3: certain you know, corporate narrative to push.
Speaker 4: And that's my concern.
Speaker 3: So that's that's the That's why I draw the distinction
Speaker 3: between you. As we said in our video, it's if
Speaker 3: you want to just focus on AI and if they
Speaker 3: want to just sell all the GPUs to big enterprise companies,
Speaker 3: go for it, but you know, don't screw all the
Speaker 3: rest of us over at the same time.
Speaker 2: And do you think that they're abandoning consumer or is
Speaker 2: it just they are they are focusing on the shiny
Speaker 2: object of the day.
Speaker 3: I I don't know Jensen Juan personally my read on him, though,
Speaker 3: I feel like it's unlikely he would want to abandon
Speaker 3: something he already has, right, even if it's only out
Speaker 3: of maybe sort of pride, and so I don't think
Speaker 3: they'll abandon it. I do think they're focusing on AI.
Speaker 3: It's just that, uh I don't. I mean, they have
Speaker 3: like ninety two percent market share and consumer GPUs now
Speaker 3: according to John Petty Research. So it's just like they can.
Speaker 3: It's a monopoly. I mean, that's like, it's just like,
Speaker 3: this is what monopolies look like.
Speaker 2: Well, let's it feel I would say there was an
Speaker 2: opportunity for someone to come in. But based on everything
Speaker 2: you've shown with like AMD recently, even on the low end.
Speaker 2: It just it doesn't feel it almost feels like consumer
Speaker 2: graphics up being not treated with the respect they deserve,
Speaker 2: despite PC gaming being huge industry and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a massive industry and prosumer too. I mean
Speaker 3: even just non AI use cases include people who edit
Speaker 3: videos or make movies or do three D animations. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think Intel's a good barometer here because Intel decided
Speaker 3: to get into consumer GPU, and they're new to it,
Speaker 3: and they've had a hell of a time. They're doing
Speaker 3: much better now with this current generation. But one of
Speaker 3: the quotes from an Intel person I spoke with previously
Speaker 3: to us was for their last generation was we should
Speaker 3: be wrapping these with money when we saw them, because
Speaker 3: they were just they were basically subsidizing the buildout of
Speaker 3: this new division, this GPU division, by undercutting prices from
Speaker 3: competitors to just try and get their foot in the
Speaker 3: door with what at the time was a lesser product.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I think they're a good broader because
Speaker 3: if you want to be first of all, to have
Speaker 3: a fab a fabrication facility costs these days potentially tens
Speaker 3: of billions of dollars in years to build so a
Speaker 3: new vendor would have to be fabless like Nvidia and
Speaker 3: like AMD, unlike Intel, and to be fabulous and make a.
Speaker 2: Sorry about this, this is just for the listeners. What
Speaker 2: is a fab in this case?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a fab a fabrication plant is basically a
Speaker 3: factory for silicon. It's a highly controlled, clean room environment,
Speaker 3: and that means that there's basically absolutely no dust ingress,
Speaker 3: the small pieces of skin or whatever, you know, just
Speaker 3: working in an environment that's all either captured or controlled.
Speaker 3: And that's because a single particle of dust on a
Speaker 3: wafer can destroy at least part of that silicon supply.
Speaker 3: Cool sorry, Yeah, And so a new vent would have
Speaker 3: to be probably fabulous unless they're already huge like Intel,
Speaker 3: and that means they need to go get supply from
Speaker 3: most likely TSMC, possibly from Intel maybe. I mean the
Speaker 3: past Samsung has been used. There's really not a lot
Speaker 3: of options here, and everybody wants their silicon, so to
Speaker 3: even get allocation of these silicon wafers would be difficult.
Speaker 3: It's just all of the chips are stacked against Someone
Speaker 3: wants to do this, and they would. I think the
Speaker 3: only way you get in is if you're an existing
Speaker 3: multi billion dollar company or have obscene amounts of investment.
Speaker 2: Well that fucking sucks. Yeah, it's actually that's a good
Speaker 2: question though. So this is for the old time is listening.
Speaker 2: I remember having a three FX it's a Voodoo fifty
Speaker 2: five hundred picture of a halo on the on the box.
Speaker 2: Actually don't know what happened there. What happened to all
Speaker 2: the smaller manufacturers. Did they just get kind of absorbed
Speaker 2: or did they just full of punt?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they got bought or yeah, I think three dfxx,
Speaker 3: if I remember correctly, was bought by Nvidia and checked that.
Speaker 3: But some of the others, I mean there's like Via
Speaker 3: Cyrix and some of these CPU companies. Yeah, three dfcs
Speaker 3: bought by Nvidia. SGI was another, so they they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forgot about SGI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So SGI is interesting because they sort of pursued heavily.
Speaker 3: I guess the at the time what enterprise would have been,
Speaker 3: or at least workstation hardware, and they're really invested in workstation.
Speaker 3: The story I got from someone I wasn't covering things
Speaker 3: back then, but was that SGI was less interested in
Speaker 3: consumer and didn't really think consumers could afford video cards.
Speaker 3: Which at the time was sort of true, and that's
Speaker 3: when video came in and you know, started really kicking
Speaker 3: ass in the early days. But a lot of them
Speaker 3: just they either got bought or they sort of exited
Speaker 3: that space.
Speaker 2: So changing text slightly, how do you feel about AI
Speaker 2: in general? I know that I'm not expecting like an
Speaker 2: industry and that I'm just from your perspective, at least
Speaker 2: from what you've told me and watching your videos, it
Speaker 2: feels like AI is something now being stapled onto the
Speaker 2: side of literally everything. Yeah, within your world. Do you
Speaker 2: think there's like do you use it? Do you have
Speaker 2: any thoughts on it?
Speaker 3: There's uses? I mean one thing I am I'm actually
Speaker 3: worried about long term with the AI use cases. And
Speaker 3: the biggest thing I'm worried about is on the media side.
Speaker 3: We obviously get a lot of comments. I probably read
Speaker 3: or at least skim, you know, tens of thousands of
Speaker 3: comments a year, and I'm seeing more and more AI
Speaker 3: comments and not just the really obvious YouTube spambots, but
Speaker 3: somewhere you kind of you and you're like that could
Speaker 3: be real, you know, and I don't like, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't want to like remove it. If it's a valid,
Speaker 3: real comment, but then a few comments down the thread
Speaker 3: there will be this discussion amongst what are obvious sort
Speaker 3: of bots about say some new cryptobs or whatever. And
Speaker 3: so I'm actually worried about sort of like that Internet theory.
Speaker 3: I guess, the concept of you're the only human in
Speaker 3: the room and you might not even know it. That's
Speaker 3: concerning to me. There's a loneliness factor there I'm worried about.
Speaker 3: But the big one is just how easily people are
Speaker 3: manipulated by comments that sort of appear to have the
Speaker 3: prevailing opinion just in general, even from real comments. You
Speaker 3: then take that and you apply it to potential AI
Speaker 3: that becomes very convincing in the future. And you then
Speaker 3: think one step further of who owns these lms and
Speaker 3: the companies that sell so called AI products, and all
Speaker 3: of them are these multi billion dollar companies that if
Speaker 3: they want to, could tune it to filter the responses
Speaker 3: in ways that are beneficial to them. And that to
Speaker 3: me is sort of the dystopian old manuals at clouds,
Speaker 3: you know, like concern I have, but it.
Speaker 2: Feels like a more practical one because everyone freaks out
Speaker 2: about AGI, which is fictional and all of these other things.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the idea that comments would be filled with
Speaker 2: people who were just subtly being nudged in different directions.
Speaker 2: And when you talk about corporate narratives as well, who
Speaker 2: knows that. I don't usually with lms in particular, try
Speaker 2: not to lean into anything too conspiratal. But like, this
Speaker 2: is a simple one that you're kind of seeing signs of.
Speaker 2: Even on Blue Sky, I will occasionally get a comment
Speaker 2: from someone it will take me half a second second
Speaker 2: to go, like, what's wrong with you? This doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like a human being saying this. No one speaks like this,
Speaker 2: but you sound human adjacent, right, And I'm and at
Speaker 2: your scale, I imagine that becomes a lot harder to
Speaker 2: moderate slash process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it really is just I mean, I'm highly
Speaker 3: my job is to be skeptical, and you try to
Speaker 3: do that in a healthy way. You know, it's easy
Speaker 3: to go way overboard. But this is something where I
Speaker 3: just I think there's so much opportunity to be abused.
Speaker 3: And I was actually looking at there's that meta story
Speaker 3: about meta and Facebook pirate in all of these you know,
Speaker 3: books or taking books from pirated materials and integrating them,
Speaker 3: and there's a lawsuit over it. One of the things
Speaker 3: I was thinking of though, and actually speaking to a
Speaker 3: copyright attorney about, was it really feels like right now,
Speaker 3: the companies that are willing to break the most laws,
Speaker 3: especially intellectual property laws, and steal the most stuff will
Speaker 3: make so much money that it's like, you know what,
Speaker 3: let's just we'll just deal with the consequences in five
Speaker 3: years when it gets through the court, and we'll be
Speaker 3: so far out ahead of anyone who didn't lie, cheat
Speaker 3: and steel, you know, to get here. Yeah, that it
Speaker 3: won't matter, which is just how the big corporations broadly behave.
Speaker 3: But applying that to a new area like AI, I
Speaker 3: don't know. It's I'm really concerned about it. I think
Speaker 3: there's absolutely good use cases. And I mean, as an example, internally,
Speaker 3: we've used it to concept things, so like I'll have
Speaker 3: an idea in my head for art for a product,
Speaker 3: and I can see it, but I'm a terrible artist,
Speaker 3: and so there's a use case there where I'll sit
Speaker 3: down with my artist and try to explain it as
Speaker 3: best I can, and he'll take a go at it,
Speaker 3: and if I'm like, no, it doesn't really like, look
Speaker 3: how it looks in my head. That's when I might
Speaker 3: try to pull some mid journey thing like okay, here's
Speaker 3: like broadly like the style artistically I'm trying to get,
Speaker 3: you know, and then he can take that and actually
Speaker 3: make something.
Speaker 2: But just to be clear, you would never use any
Speaker 2: of that stuff in the real It is literally just
Speaker 2: a concept tool, correctly, just making sure the listeners have
Speaker 2: a good view on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, correct the artist so Andrew has been working with
Speaker 3: me forever. He makes it all from scratch, like can
Speaker 3: blender normally and actually flattens it into a two D
Speaker 3: image for the shirts and things cool. So yeah, it
Speaker 3: is purely used. If if in the first conversation he
Speaker 3: can't like quite figure out what I'm trying to explain
Speaker 3: as a non artist, you know, it's like, okay, let
Speaker 3: me go try and figure out, like I don't I
Speaker 3: don't know art words, you know, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know no, no, I know. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, how
Speaker 2: do you deal with the ethical side of that, because
Speaker 2: it's just it is still working on copyright material. But
Speaker 2: I guess if you're not putting it out there, it's
Speaker 2: just like this this shit sucks even like looking at
Speaker 2: it feels bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's hard because it's the first step
Speaker 3: for us. So it's always like a Google search to
Speaker 3: see what's out there already, and so we'll do a
Speaker 3: Google search if I'm trying to explain something I want,
Speaker 3: and normally that's pretty successful. But like now it's the same.
Speaker 3: It's like you're getting all this aiart surface in and
Speaker 3: so at some point it's sort of like the downloading
Speaker 3: and uploading and downloading, uploading a PMNG multiple times, it
Speaker 3: feels like it's just getting like the quality is getting
Speaker 3: lost somewhere in that chain.
Speaker 2: It is funny. We're also like three years into it,
Speaker 2: and the best we've got as far as like from
Speaker 2: you arguably one of the most. Like I don't mean this,
Speaker 2: I mean this actually is in a good way, Like
Speaker 2: you would be excited about something cool in tech coming out,
Speaker 2: like if something cool happened, And the coolest we've got
Speaker 2: is Yes, sometimes I can't work out what I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: so I just make one image and hopefully my artist
Speaker 2: gets in. But yeah, yeah, it's just like that with
Speaker 2: three years in and that's the best we've got.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think we early early on with GPT
Speaker 3: when we ran one of the first news stories that
Speaker 3: we ran about it, and I was trying to understand, like,
Speaker 3: what is this thing. I remember feeding it a spreadsheet
Speaker 3: I had made with our own data and asking it
Speaker 3: to analyze the results, and it was just like and
Speaker 3: I keep in mind this was early, but it had
Speaker 3: hallucinated so much that I was just I was disillusioned.
Speaker 3: It was like, Okay, this is literally just made everything up.
Speaker 2: And that was kind of how I was at the
Speaker 2: beginning as well. Because I love my dad's magaizmos. I
Speaker 2: was kind of like, Okay, everyone's talking about this, and
Speaker 2: so I tried to do all of the things. They talked, Oh,
Speaker 2: it could automate work. I'm a spreadsheet heavy guy and
Speaker 2: this crap can't even do that. The funniest one for
Speaker 2: me was that you have a Manus Manus You heard
Speaker 2: of this one now? They claimed to be an AI
Speaker 2: agent company. Okay, and I asked that can you go
Speaker 2: and find all all of the links that mentioned me
Speaker 2: for the last two Years's probably over one hundred of them,
Speaker 2: and it takes eleven minutes or so, and it's writing
Speaker 2: Python for every single step and it comes back with
Speaker 2: eleven links or like nine links. I go, hey, you
Speaker 2: miss some, and it comes back with nine more after
Speaker 2: like another ten minutes. And this is this was about
Speaker 2: a month ago. It's just what it feels like. They're
Speaker 2: pushing them upper hill. It's but back to video for
Speaker 2: a second because this will be the last video one.
Speaker 2: I think you have done a really good job of
Speaker 2: kind of tracking in video as they've jumped towards these movements.
Speaker 2: But they've done this, but they did. How big was
Speaker 2: their move towards Crypto That's actually something I've had trouble
Speaker 2: encapsulating before. Did they really shoot the company that aggressively
Speaker 2: in that direction?
Speaker 3: That's a good question. So from and videos relationship with
Speaker 3: crypto is weird. I remember at one point there was
Speaker 3: some kind of earnings call or something where it was
Speaker 3: during one of the GPU mining sort of apocalypses where
Speaker 3: consumers couldn't get cards because they were all being bought
Speaker 3: by crypto mining. And I remember doing a report on
Speaker 3: in Hardware News on the earnings where it seemed like
Speaker 3: the amount of revenue for mining was sort of obfuscated
Speaker 3: and it was a challenge where the devices are shared
Speaker 3: with gaming and so okay, I could see how it
Speaker 3: would be difficult to decouple these in a revenue chart
Speaker 3: if you sell gaming devices and they're used for multiple things, right,
Speaker 3: so you know, it's like I kind of get it.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, they weren't like hiding from
Speaker 3: making sales to crypto mining. And then later on and
Speaker 3: Video released these l R low hash rate cards. I
Speaker 3: think it was the thirty series, and that was done
Speaker 3: to try and get more card while they say to
Speaker 3: try and get more cards to gamers. Now there were
Speaker 3: bypasses for that, which is a separate story, but it
Speaker 3: was done at a time when the thirty series. It
Speaker 3: was really unfortunate covering it because like the hardware was
Speaker 3: pretty good, the prices at the beginning were good, but
Speaker 3: there's no supply to meet the demand, which was partly
Speaker 3: because of COVID shutdowns where people were building new computers
Speaker 3: for home, and also partly because of mining, and so
Speaker 3: they tried a few things like these low hash rate
Speaker 3: cards to reduce the viability for mining operations. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it definitely they've kind of that pendulum has
Speaker 3: swung back and forth. I think at end Video where
Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, we sell a lot of these and
Speaker 3: make a lot of money to people are really pissed off,
Speaker 3: you know, and we can't get them to consumer users
Speaker 3: who might actually be repeat customers in the future, and
Speaker 3: so let's try and restrict it. So it's definitely don't
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not unexpected behavior, I guess for a
Speaker 3: big corporation where it's just where's the money and if
Speaker 3: the pendulum swings back the other way, you know, we
Speaker 3: need to try and minimize how much both of these
Speaker 3: potential client groups hate us for catering to the other one.
Speaker 2: So so final GPU related question, actually, and forgive me
Speaker 2: if you don't know the answer for this exactly, but
Speaker 2: assuming the AI bubble burst and you don't have to
Speaker 2: commit to whether you think that will happen or not,
Speaker 2: what else can these big enterprise level GPUs actually be
Speaker 2: used for.
Speaker 3: They could be used for a lot. I mean, like
Speaker 3: some of the we're talking to a professor at a
Speaker 3: university for an upcoming piece, and they have some very
Speaker 3: serious like machine learning research use cases, and I've looked
Speaker 3: into some of the other ones, and as you might expect,
Speaker 3: there's really promising use cases in medical and pattern recognition
Speaker 3: and like so called AI being able to do early
Speaker 3: identification of potentially cancerous masses and people that you know.
Speaker 3: It's one of those like if you treat it like
Speaker 3: a tool rather than like the answer. Then I suppose
Speaker 3: in this example, as someone who knows nothing about, you know,
Speaker 3: the medical world, but I suppose a skilled doctor might
Speaker 3: be able to use it to help the process. I
Speaker 3: think the concern I would have as as a skeptic
Speaker 3: would be okay, but can we keep that doctor in
Speaker 3: the mindset of I'm using this to help catch my
Speaker 3: mistakes or help see things I can't, rather than you know,
Speaker 3: I'm overworked and I need to lean on this to
Speaker 3: do my job. Yeah, that would be the concern.
Speaker 2: I'm just my whole thing is just if they and
Speaker 2: I believe they have. This is my personal opinion. I
Speaker 2: think they've massively overbuilt and oversolved these cards, and I
Speaker 2: it's sorry cards is inappropriate to refer to the enterprise
Speaker 2: ones racks, I suppose, But it's what do they do
Speaker 2: next is going to be the question eventually, And I
Speaker 2: mean there's just very clearly not going to be enough
Speaker 2: use cases for them. But I think that's going to
Speaker 2: be really interesting. And now I've got two fun questions
Speaker 2: for you. First of all, did you hear about this
Speaker 2: thirty six hundred dollars keyboard? It's mad the Norbauer Seneca. Okay,
Speaker 2: so I'm going to send you this later. So Nathon
Speaker 2: Edward's over at the Verge reviewed this one, this thirty
Speaker 2: six hundred dollars keyboard, which I need to send you
Speaker 2: because I assume you would Seneca.
Speaker 3: I see the review.
Speaker 2: Yeah, keyboard, it's insane. Listeners, I will drop with everything
Speaker 2: we've been talking about. I'll have links in there. But
Speaker 2: this thing, it's like precision honed and if he gets
Speaker 2: it wrong, he has to start again with it takes
Speaker 2: him like a full day to do, like the things
Speaker 2: that absorb in impact. So cool.
Speaker 3: This is this reminds me of the I don't know,
Speaker 3: probably almost twenty years ago. Now there is the super
Speaker 3: expensive I think it was like an optimistic keyboard or something.
Speaker 2: Like the opt or the dust keyboard where it had
Speaker 2: the little screens on each key.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was screens for every key and back then,
Speaker 3: you know that was that was before we were putting
Speaker 3: screens on everything.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, I won't. That's the thing. I love that
Speaker 2: this exists because if you look at the Verge story
Speaker 2: with Chell Lnk. It's just a guy who literally sits in.
Speaker 2: This character just builds these things like an artesian. Now,
Speaker 2: I wish we had more weird shit like this. This
Speaker 2: is what I miss about the tech industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the the weird stuff and the cool stuff and
Speaker 3: things where that's what I like seeing that computext but
Speaker 3: it's okay, I could this isn't a product yet, but
Speaker 3: I could see it becoming a product, or there's pieces
Speaker 3: of this that could become a you know, an affordable product.
Speaker 3: That's the stuff I like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you see anything really bizarre like that there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the the well actually most recently this
Speaker 3: wasn't computext. But the most sort of bizarre cool thing
Speaker 3: I saw and worked with that I was really happy
Speaker 3: about was the pre built PC made by a small
Speaker 3: company called Cherry Tree. They make in computer cases and
Speaker 3: it's just a computer inside of the husk of a
Speaker 3: video card.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's cool. Yeah, I love that. That's it. That
Speaker 2: reminds me of the corse Air thousand D case, which
Speaker 2: I actually have a home where they have you can
Speaker 2: fit micro micro at X and the regular sized motherboard
Speaker 2: in there. I love that stuff like. It's that's why
Speaker 2: I that's the thing I love about tech, the weirly,
Speaker 2: really dumb, kind of niche stuff. And actually, with that
Speaker 2: in mind, what are you actually excited for as we
Speaker 2: wrap up, Like what the thing's coming out soon that
Speaker 2: you're kind of pumped up to see?
Speaker 3: I mean, the casesn't cool in are really interesting to me.
Speaker 3: I just think in the puter actually, CPUs have gotten
Speaker 3: interesting too, So on the silicon side, AMD has done
Speaker 3: really well to actually get into gear competitively over the
Speaker 3: last several years. And these they call them X three
Speaker 3: D CPUs, which have a bunch of extra cash on them.
Speaker 3: They've been really good for gaming and that's a I
Speaker 3: mean seeing the extra Yeah. So, because you can fit
Speaker 3: more stuff local to the CPU, like like you can
Speaker 3: store more of what the CPU needs to process within
Speaker 3: the CPU silicon itself, it doesn't have to go out
Speaker 3: to system memory. So the way it normally works is
Speaker 3: like if you're playing a game and you need some
Speaker 3: kind of file for drawing something in the game or whatever,
Speaker 3: I mean, go into memory of some kind. So it
Speaker 3: might be GPU memory, might be system memory. But if
Speaker 3: you take the system memory example, something goes into system
Speaker 3: memory you need that file, there'll be a transaction where
Speaker 3: you can imagine these bits going down a bus to
Speaker 3: the memory and coming all the way back to the CPU,
Speaker 3: and that's a long highway to go down. Whereas with
Speaker 3: extra cash you can store more local to the CPU,
Speaker 3: it can transact via basically like a shortcut, and that
Speaker 3: allows in the real world significantly higher performance in gaming
Speaker 3: or in cash heavy applications.
Speaker 2: And so the new AMD ones, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: The new like the ninety eight hundred x three D
Speaker 3: for example. So those I'm really excited about that. How
Speaker 3: that's gone because that actually you may like this, but
Speaker 3: that was actually a sort of a skunkworks project where
Speaker 3: this team of engineers in AMD and we ran a
Speaker 3: story on this too, but they decided, let's just try
Speaker 3: this idea, and they experimented with it, they got it working,
Speaker 3: and they brought it through management and said, hey, this
Speaker 3: looks viable and uh, you know, and then they were
Speaker 3: able to actually make a product that it came from
Speaker 3: an abnormal path of an underground sort of you know,
Speaker 3: skunk works effort at the in the engineering department to
Speaker 3: actually being the leading gaming product for CPUs on the market.
Speaker 2: That's it I We will have that link in the
Speaker 2: episode notes as well, and we can wrap on the product,
Speaker 2: the AMD skunk works product. You mentioned in a recent
Speaker 2: video that I had not AMD made a mountain bike
Speaker 2: at one point, just want to one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, that was not a good moment for AMD.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Fortunately, fortunately it didn't particularly damage their CPU or gp
Speaker 3: A credibility because it was like so.
Speaker 2: Long imagine so but why why did they do.
Speaker 3: What they It was turning the COVID bike shortages. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you remember, but like all kinds of bicycles, yeah,
Speaker 3: were difficult to get. And uh, yes, they made these
Speaker 3: three hundred dollars so called mountain bikes. I think they're
Speaker 3: like Kent Walmart bike rebrands basically nice. So they went
Speaker 3: real cheap, yeah, and uh yeah it was advertised, you
Speaker 3: know for mountain biking and off road trails and whatever.
Speaker 3: And so we took it down a trail and I
Speaker 3: actually had trouble getting out of the parking lot. That's
Speaker 3: how messed up the bike was. We had to take
Speaker 3: it to a shop before I rode it for a
Speaker 3: safety check because the the used V brakes and they
Speaker 3: were going through the spokes. So they definitely would have
Speaker 3: stopped me.
Speaker 2: Jenson woe sitting there being like we could have had
Speaker 2: a fucking mountain butt man. Yeah we could.
Speaker 3: How do we get Yeah, if we make a bike,
Speaker 3: we can get rid of them.
Speaker 2: They're just like two twenty billion dollars shoved into mountain bike.
Speaker 3: Resa.
Speaker 2: That would be so good, Steve, It's always such a
Speaker 2: pleasure having you on here. Where can people find.
Speaker 3: You and gamers next us on YouTube?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being here. I'm of course
Speaker 2: that's itch when you've been listening to Better Offline, have
Speaker 2: a great week, everyone, staves, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 2: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 2: is Mattersowski. You can check out more of his music
Speaker 2: and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m A T
Speaker 2: T O s O W s ki dot com. You
Speaker 2: can email me at easy at Better offline dot com,
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