DLSS 5 Is Great - WAN Show March 20, 2026

What is up everyone? Happy Friday and welcome to the WAN show. Boy, do we ever have a great show lined up for you guys this week. And I don't often get to say that just completely unironically. I get to have my first hands-on experience with the MacBook Neo, which I haven't touched yet, but I see they left on set for me to check out. It's why I assume that that's there. I'm actually legitimately super excited for that. Yeah, I was hoping you knew. I They told me to bring it. There's the big DLSS 5 news this week. We'll be talking through that. We've also got a special guest who will be joining us for that segment. The one, the only Mr. Riley Murloc. Do I come in? No, you don't come in yet. Later. I'll wait later. Stay there. Okay. Just Just stay there. Um, what what else do we have for topics this week? Got some big updates on Riley Murloc. It's an inside joke. You often do that. Real name. You do you do that? Yeah, quite often. Oh, nice. I actually don't remember the exact origin of Riley Murloc. Did I misspe or No, no. Yeah. No, no, it was it was it was a Warcraft reference. I just don't remember why. Stay on topic, Quinus. Thanks, Riley. Um, what else we got this week? Uh, Windows recall was cracked again, which is so exciting for me personally. I really like that. I think that's really good. I think that's good for everybody. Genuinely, I'm actually not even meing. Uh, also, what else happened? Um, you know what? I was going through the topics and I noticed it's kind of a good news show. Is it kind of accidentally? Yeah. Yeah. Find another good one. Find another good one. He's going to find one. He's going to find one. Wait for it. What? There's a lot of really weird topics. Oh, that's not a good topic. Uh, I highlighted a good one. Steve Waznjak saw the LT Core Master remote video and liked it. How cool is that? That's awesome. I I heard that we like knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew him or something. I didn't know he saw the video. Oh, I saw his quote. I'm not going to say it already. The show is brought to you today by Vessie, Factor Meals, Zero Bounce, and AMD alongside, of course, our rap partner, Dbrand, our laptop partner, Razer, and our chair partner, also Razer, whose logo I so uh whoops, covered up. There you go. That's better. Sorry, Razer. Got that fixed for you. I should have cut it off. So, let's jump right into our headline topic today, which is, of course, DLSS5. Now, Riley, I'm going to invite you on in just a moment here. No, sit down. In a moment, you're in a moment. I'm gonna go through the dock and then Riley specifically like with all the aggressiveness of that uncle that you see every once in a while but appreciate hearing from just invited himself to come in and talk about this on the show because he has a take to share with the world and techn was not enough to contain his take. So we're going to talk about it on W show but first let's get through this. During the keynote of Nvidia's GTC event on Monday, CEO Jen Sen Hong unveiled Nvidia's DLSS 5, calling it, this is a direct quote, the company's most significant breakthrough in computer graphics since the debut of realtime ray tracing in 2018. While Nvidia says that the tech infuses pixels with photorealistic lighting and materials, many observers have criticized the handful of demos, saying that DLSS seems like nothing more than an AI slop filter. Uh what what did what did what do people call it? Yasifying faces, I think. So is that is that the term? Yeah, I love it. And anyway, the demos spawned a title wave of DLSS 5 memes which escaped containment to the point where Domino's Pizza in the UK joined in. And I I have a hyperlink to this, so I feel like it's uh it's important for me to click it. Solid. Thank you. Uh thank you, Dominoes. that is legitimately uh helpful and advances the conversation. Nvidia quickly pinned a comment on one of the demo videos clarifying that it is not a filter. And in a Q&A following the keynote, Jensen called these critiques, direct quote, completely wrong, saying it's not post-processing at the frame level, it is generative control at the geometry level. This seems to conflict with answers provided by Nvidia's Jacob Freeman to questions that he was sent by YouTuber Daniel Owen. Um, good old Jacob. Uh, Jacob confirmed that DSS5 only takes the rendered 2D frame plus motion vectors as input. Owen specifically asks if the model is actually aware of things like 3D geometry, 3D depth, etc. And Freeman replies saying DLSS 5 again quote is trained end to end to understand complex scene semantics. Nvidia says DLSS 5 will launch this fall. They revealed the live demos were running on two RTX 5090s, one to run the game, the other to run DLSS 5. And while some press has reported that Nvidia does have a version of the tech running on a single GPU, it is unclear at launch what kind of GPU it will have to be in order to run DLSS 5 and also like you know a game and stuff. RILEY, COME ON ON and let's talk about DLSS 5. You want me or not, I'm crashing this. He's in He's in here. The one and only Riley Murloc. Everyone, you had no idea I was coming to be here. I totally knew you were coming. You invited yourself here. Oh my god, he's holding the mic. Dan, please have his mic off right now. It's fine. Just Hi, everyone. I'm I'm happy to join the show. That feels that sounds good, actually, cuz it's a good mic. All right, Riley. Uh, so hit us with the hit us with the take that you that you were so desperate to bring to the W show. Why do I give my take first? I thought, what about your take? No, no. I I I I wanted to hear yours. Well, I think that So, I added in this stuff about who's saying what? Hello. You're talking. Okay. Uh, I added in this stuff about I mean Daniel Owen posted this video I think yesterday or the day before and that was just very interesting because I think the main the main the key problem in a lot of this is the definition of the word filter. But also, as I wrote in the discussion question, I think that this issue illustrates a fundamental divide or it it brings up a fundamental question like do we care about games? I like it. You both are like looking at me like this. This is fun. Well, I I want to hear your take for sure, but like I need I feel like I need to move farther back so that it's more uh do we care about games as like a a simulation or do we just want our games to be to look as pretty as possible? Like is there some value to the the nature of the game as a like hardfought technical achievement simulating a universe? or are we looking just for pretty games? You know, I think that's uh there's there's that's there's that. There's more, too. Well, I mean, for you my my initial response to that is that gamers are not a monolithic entity, right? So, so any question even sort start even any question that even starts with do gamers want is already going to create fragmentation within the community because every single gamer is going to want completely different things and even speaking for myself the things that I want out of one game are not necessarily the things that I want out of another game when I fire up my Nintendo Switch. Mhm. I actually don't want to see every pore on Mario's giant Chris Prattv voiced nose. That that's that's not desirable to me for for that cinematic universe, so to speak. The Mario nipples shot was enough. Need any more of that. Exactly. So, but but on the other hand, you know, if I were to think back to a game that I played that I felt really immersed in in a in a realistic world, and this is a deep cut, but Freelancer was was a game that I really enjoyed back in the early 2000s, and it was about like exploring the known universe. If you told me that there was a mod pack, like a texture pack slash assasset pack that could take that game and I could replay that game in photorealistic quality and all I needed was like a modern GPU, I'd be really excited about that. And then I think you've got a subset of those people that are really excited to experience their game with a a fresh shiny coat of paint on it that are going to go, "Oh, what? So we used AI to achieve that? Who the cares? Bring it on." For sure. And so you've got many different camps. I probably haven't even scratched the surface of all the different perspectives you could have on it, but I I felt I feel like you had a little bit more you were going to expand on after I answered your question. No, I mean that's all super super interesting. I think that that is a a core part of the issue here is that like some people just want uh pretty games and other people are like really really concerned about the like how it's being achieved and how it's being presented. I mean I know that you wanted to talk about uh Nvidia uh putting this forward as DLSS5. Let's get to that later. Let's get to that one later. Okay. Sure. Sure. I think for me like obviously there's the initial reaction of like the look because like the environments I think it I think anyone who's being honest can look at the DLSS5 on versus off demos and recognize that in many cases it's making the environments look really good. It's making them look like a photo taken. That is that is an underdised aspect of this point. I think people are really focused on the characters. And that makes sense because, you know, if you were to tell if you were to ask me what do I love about one of my favorite games, Final Fantasy 6, what do I love about it? I I I don't I don't love the quality of the overworld. Okay, it it doesn't look great, but I but I love the characters. M. And so if you were going to go and you were going to make the overworld, you know, look way more realistic. Okay. Okay. Maybe a pixel art sprite game is a bad example, but in general, if you're going to make an environment look more realistic, more more true to life. Um, but you're going to mess with a character that like I connected with in some way. That's going to offend me. that's going to affect me a lot more than if you made like a like the vine that Tarzan is swinging on look way more viny. I think that's my biggest problem with it is that like better graphics aren't always better in my opinion. Um, and we're talking about art styles and things like that. And a lot of the styles in the video in the like announcement video are pretty similar. They're all trying to go for like decently high realism in some cases 100% realism like the the football club one. Yeah. Or like if you're playing like Indiana Jones in the great circle or something like that and you told me, "Yeah, I can make this more realistic." I'd be like the whole the whole stick of this game is that you are indie and you're in an Indiana Jones film. But there are a ton of games where if you made the graphics better, I'd probably think it was worse. Um, and putting all of the creative control of that into your your your GPU's vibe check is How to Train Your Dragon. How to Train Your Dragon Hidden World is actually a film example of that that I found kind of unsettling to watch because I've got these cartoon characters walking around in environments that look so photorealistic that I actually found it kind of immersionbreaking. I think I think the insane success of Poptopia is a good example of this actually. It's like not a like this this is not we're not pushing graphic engines to run this game, you know? This is this is not crushing your 5090. Um, but people love the game. I think this is I think this is what I'm hearing you guys talk about the look of the game a lot and how pretty it is. And this is why I wanted to bring up the discussion point of like do we care at all that we're making the frame that we're served prettier but it is essentially and like you know to come back to the filter thing. Yeah. It's essentially I view that as a filter. A lot of people, a lot of like more graphically technically uh technically oriented people, I feel like uh people who know a lot of technical details about graphics are seeing people call it a slop filter and are like it's not a filter. It's obviously not a filter. But I think what people on the other side are uh there there's two definitions. There's two operative definitions of the word filter going on here. I think there's the filter of like Instagram where it's basically the photo and you're overlaying essentially. Yeah. you're you're you're changing some color information, but it's the same image. Uh, and then but I think a lot of people who are calling this an AI slop filter are thinking of a filter as something that does not have access to the underlying facts of the game world. It doesn't know the data that is being input by the developers. It doesn't know the complete shape of those 3D objects that it sees. It's a 2D frame that is being fed into a model and it's outputting an an image that is altered. So, it's it's it's it's altered, which is what we mean by filtering. There is a one particular example. Yeah. Um that Daniel Owen does a lot in his video. I encourage you guys to watch Daniel Owen's video. It's super interesting. Yeah. Dan, maybe you could throw that in the chat for us. Yeah. Um it's linked in the doc. Um uh uh the side of the guy's head in in Starfield has no hair and then in the DLSS 5 on version there's hair there. So, it's like changing. And this is why it's so interesting to me because I'm like we're no longer simulating the world in that po at that point. Luke, can you bring Pto Popia? Can you bring that back? Ptokia, can you bring that back up for me for a second? Okay. So, the first thing that I thought when I was looking at at this, you know, you brought this up and I went, "Yeah, what a clear example of an art style where I wouldn't want my Snorlax to be covered in photorealistic fur and and look like an actual, you know, like weird fat cat thing lying in the middle of the path." Okay, I would put it put Yeah, that's exactly where I was going to go with this. Put that away. Give me gross Snorlax. Put it away. Get it out of here. Here's an alternate take. What if my worldview and my preference is not the be all and end all? Well, it's it's the the company making Well, hold on. Hold on. Well, is it? because because the I mean look every every every game I shouldn't say every game with a nude mod because some of them they clearly meant for people to put them in but every game that has a nude mod right they didn't necessarily intend for them to be x-rated clearly and yet no gamers have ultimately decided by and large over the course of gaming history that they're in charge of how they play their game if they want to play the mission the way that the game developer intended, then that's by all means they're right. And if they want to completely not play the mission and play a completely different style, that's there there's there's more genres. I think that's still a problem with the OSS 5, though. Well, hold on, hold on. I'm going somewhere with this. There's more genres of playing the game a way that it wasn't intended by the developer than there are ways that the the developer intended to play the game, right? like you talk about like speedrunning or uh you know um you know not losing health or you know whatever challenges people might set for themselves. Right. Exactly. So with that in mind, if I decided whether it was through a meticulously handcrafted mod pack or whether it was through a slop filter that I I as a gamer didn't care about the artist's original vision of the game and I wanted to run it some way that I feel like running it. I don't feel that way. I don't want my Snorlax to have fur. But if Riley wanted his Snorlax to have fur and there was some AI slop tool available to him that let him do that or you know enlarged Tifa's boobs or whatever then I don't go I may I don't think people are taking issue with this type of thing existing. I think a lot of people are well well sure but but I think with I think that I think I think that that isn't the exist you might have a lot of people saying oh that shouldn't exist or whatever but I think that the massive outcry that the nature of this particular backlash is more related to the fact that Nvidia is doing it and Nvidia isn't just some company yes they have 95% market share of gaming GPUs and they have in the ve in the past many times uh you know uh what do you call it? They talk all the time to play ball. Yes. They talk all the time about how they set the direction for gaming graphics. They they have spent a lot of the last months bragging about how they are the ones that effectively invented modern computer graphics like this is this is what they're saying. So if they're pushing DLSS and they're talking about how they're working with developers and well publishers and and the companies, not as much as the developers, but still right now like this is them trying to push a market direction. This isn't them. This isn't like I'm agreeing with what you're saying. We were going to say effectively the same thing. I don't if if someone if some random company was like this tool exists, I think there'd be some people being like huh that's dumb and not really caring. But the fact that it's DS5, it's Nvidia. Nvidia kind of sets the sets the tone, sets the messaging, and often sets the direction, that's concerning. I just want to I want to get in there though that I I like to the point of like to the point that some people might be okay with a a tool like this existing like I I think that if it came out that some indie dev made a made a a version of this that you could like throw into Optiscaler or whatever or like use it with one of the open source tools and and people started doing that. I think that it might grow and people might start using it and it's like okay uh you know there's still heavy heavy push back against AI but I think that if it's giving you like such a big boost and especially in some games that don't have the resources to to dump into like heavy graphics like maybe maybe that would be there's a I'm saying the thing in itself is it's problematic because of that whole AI connection but it's not a crazy idea. So, to the point that you just made, I think that's that's one of those that's one of those ones where depending on who you talk to, you'll hear it spun a completely different way. So, the way you just spun it was if you can dramatically improve the fidelity of a game where they didn't have the resources to make it look really good. You know, that's an argument. If I were to give the other side of that argument coin, it would be this is just a way of enabling either a uh game devs to be lazy and if you have that take, go yourself because that's that's like not valid. Um, relax. Uh, or B, more realistically, publishers and studios to employ fewer game developers and fewer artists to make their games, which is realistically what we're talking about. Like yes, any industry is going to have a handful of just like lazy people who don't feel like doing their jobs. But when you look at the kind of attrition that the game development industry has gone through over the last as long as it's existed, it's been it's been a difficult industry to be part of. I think for you to point at the individual workers who are working on these games and say, "Oh, this is just a tool to enable them to be lazy." is just such a brain deadad take that I just I can't really entertain a conversation with you. Um so the other side of that coin then would be so on the one side you go oh if this could be a tool so that's the positive take this could be a tool for enabling better visual fidelity in games that otherwise wouldn't have had the resources for it. Other side of that take is our corporate overlords who already launch a wildly successful game and then proceed to lay off half the team are going to have even more at their disposal to hire few developers and artists in order to create more slop for us to consume. And I how do we how do we reconcile those because both are true. I and I I have to say now I have to say now that like we have talked a lot about how it incre like it does DLSS5 does increase the realism of the the image like it in one image it looks like a video game and in the next image it looks like well a more realistic video game it looks it looks more more realistic but I would say that it goes past like if on one side of the spectrum it's like fake video game look and on the other side of the spectrum it's uh photo realism like it looks like real life. The DLSS5 goes way past that into hyperreal look like the contrast is high. The saturation is high there. The lighting is very global like HDR kind of. Yeah. It's a screen space type of effect. So it only has access to what is on screen. So it can't simulate. I mean the engine is supposed to be simulating the lighting in the same way. But we can see in these demos we I don't think we've shown a demo on screen yet, but I'm sure everyone's seen them a million times by now. Um, you can see in the demos that the the lighting is made much it's just there so there's so much more lighting everywhere. It's like they took this like big giant studio light and put it in front of the person. And I I think that that is something that is very very concerning from both an artistic intent perspective uh because what happened to simulating things? what happened to giving developers tools in order to like they want to light a scene a certain uh way and they will have tools but from the artistic perspective and also from the simulation perspective like we're just it doesn't look good to me it looks like can I show do we want to show this on screen hold on first character yeah sure I do want to address that Nvidia has said and let's take this for what it is it is Nvidia's marketing for a techn technology that they wish the industry to adopt because it will make gamers and the entire industry more dependent on their products they sell. So let's let's take this for what it is. But Nvidia has said that game developers will have the tools to control how DLSS5 is implemented within their game. So how do we reconcile that and everything else that we've talked about so far? Well, we have so we have details about what those controls will be. Uh actually in uh the in Daniel Owen's video, I don't think there's a screenshot, but uh uh I looked at it. Um I watched video. Good video. Go watch the video. Um he's just reiterating actually things that Nvidia has put in their press releases. They'll uh developers have access to the intensity of effect of the effect. So there'll be kind of like a slider. They can turn it up and down. They'll be able to mask off areas of the of the scene of the frame. So they like this character, I don't want it to enhance this character. I don't want it to enhance that thing over there, right? And they will have some controls of like color grading. So like they'll be able to say, "All right, literal filter boost this." Yeah. Like filter type stuff, but they won't be able to like uh customize it beyond that in terms of like, oh, do it in this style. I mean, maybe they I I'm saying right now that's what the the controls sound like. It's coming out in the fall. There's still time. And I think to be fair, I think the backlash to this is overblown for something that is not out yet. Like, and I' I don't want to say because I I've said many times, I've criticized it many times already on TechLink now here, but I do think that this was a massive overreaction. And uh there are people on the anti-DLSS5 side that are like losing their minds in a way that does not behoove them. Uh so we have to we have to keep in mind that it is coming out in the fall. They're going to be developing it more. We don't have the hardware requirements. I have a quick question for you, Riley. Are you new? I know. I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be sorry. Game did you say gamers overreacted? No. Uh well, hold on. I might have overreacted when I said that. I do play video games. Uh we've got a couple more discussion topics on this or discussion questions. Um one from uh Avian is actually let's do the one from Lefor first. I became a subscriber just to send this says Lefor. Wow. Nobody seems to be mentioning that this technology could go the other way. I could take a realistic game and, you know, maybe not with DLSS 5, but DLSS 6.9, say for instance, uh, I could take a realistic game and make it look like a cartoon. Um, and they didn't say, "Oh, I think, you know, that would be really cool. I would enjoy that." But the implication, given that they're already kind of looking at this and going, "Here's a tool. Here's what it does today. Here's what it could do tomorrow. would seem to suggest to me that they could be excited about a functionality like that. What if you could play Cartoon Freelancer and uh Pokémon? Again, I don't think anyone would have I mean, beyond all the concerns about AI like default concerns, copyright in general, all that stuff. Um, I don't think anyone would have I don't think anyone has a problem with the fundamental idea of a gamer choosing to, you know, basically run a mod on on their game. You know, I don't think anyone is is super super concerned about that. I think they are concerned about a Nvidia pushing this and b pushing this as DLSS5. Like it's not they're not saying this is a feature of DLSS5. They're saying this is DLSS5. There's like it it went from upscaling to uh you know they were changing like dnoising there was like ray reconstruction and stuff and now the DLSS5 is this whole suite of features and instead of saying hey we are we we made upscaling even better or something more multiframe gen or whatever we're saying we took multiframe gen and put it onto the first frame so now all of the frames are gened. It's like is that DSS5 at that point I I wish they called it something else. I mean, I guess my biggest question right now to to your point about the overreaction because I I actually I I see the overreaction both ways. On the one hand, I actually see people's reaction as a completely justified reaction given again Nvidia's weight in the industry. Like I've been I've been more trying to moderate the conversation rather than necessarily present my own take up till now. Do it. Um hot take. I see it as as as a as a a somewhat reasonable reaction in it. Looking at sort of the industry dynamics around uh job loss and constrained resources in game development at the same time that the gaming industry is overall making more money than ever. I I see these as actually like fundamental huge enormous problems and Nvidia's weight as a player in the industry and their ability to set the course for game development um is is a major concern. Oh, absolutely. However, over on the other side, I go, "Yeah, but how is any of this a surprise?" Nvidia telegraphed this ages ago. Right. Right. They they literally when they got up on stage and announced was it was it 50 series or was it I think it was 50 series. They they talked about neural rendering. Oh, sure. Yeah. What did we think that meant? Well, this is interesting. It meant this. Well, at the at the time, uh, it meant neural rendering of like textures, like having discrete elements within this fully simulated rendered world that use machine learning or generative AI even to help you uh, like generate textures and stuff. I know that that's a core. That was not my interpretation at all. Okay. Well, that was the demo that they did when they first mentioned like neural rendering. I mean, they had the faces thing last year. Maybe this was me just like skipping a step, but like what I interpreted that as as remember that MS Paint demo that Nvidia did like must be like 10 years ago now. Do you remember the one Luke where they had like an MS Paint grade drawing and then basically Oh, Paint Blaster. Sorry, the Paint Blaster thing. Paint blaster. No, we're talking about different things. So they had like this MS Paint grade like doodle and then basically like AId it and it turned it into like a photorealistic scene. Yeah, there's been a bunch of demos of that like Nvidia had one a few like even before Chad GPT and all Nvidia has been like crystal clear for for years now that the path to to better and I say better with huge quotation marks here because you know back to Mario you know more realistic does not necessarily mean better but I think from Nvidia's point of view if you want to sell more graphics cards right more photorealistic more true to life more true to true not even in just the visual ual sense, but also the simulation sense more true to life in the in the physics and and the and the the visuals of the scene is is better from Nvidia's standpoint. Um, and so it's been pretty clear to me that they have been saying for years now the only path to better cuz Mo's law is dead. Mors law is dead and buried is going to be alternatives to traditional rasterized rendering. And obviously the future drum that they keep beating is that it's going to be generative AI. And so to me it was just pretty obvious that that was what we were going to get. We were going to get developers going, "Here's the texture in the game will functionally just be a a white a blue a blue piece of paper that just has ocean written on it." I think that I think that to your point, the reaction is uh a bit overblown given that it's like this is obvious like this is an obvious end point for for AI and the way that hardware has been going. Um I think that the reaction is so strong because uh you know again Nvidia called a DS DLSS5 but also to the other thing you said earlier which is that the state of the industry right now like it just doesn't feel good. This very much feels like a you will own nothing and be happy situation where it's like yeah okay our hardware can't really run games anymore and you can't even buy it actually because everything's so expensive. Uh hold on but hold on don't worry use AI. I got to I got to jump in there to make yourself to give yourself psychosis and think that it's good graphics. Okay, but I got to jump in there for a second because I just two weeks ago played Cyberpunk 2077 on a 3060 and were some of my was some of the the detail that I was seeing upscaled using DLSS? Yes. But I very much owned that GPU and it very much rendered that game in a way that made me happier than if it didn't have DLSS. Yeah, but you're talking about just upscaling. Yeah, but we're talking about this isn't just upscaling. It's it's changing it's changing what is being displayed to you. Well, part of what DLSS 5 is going to do is also going to be upscaling. It's it's an entire suite of features. I don't think it even needs to upscale anymore. It's just replacing the whole frame. But I guess what my question is is if it's using hardware that I have in my computer, how is it you'll own nothing and be happy? Because I definitely still own that 3060 and it's not bothering me. Own the software. I might not own the software. I'm I mean that ship sailed years ago. This is a good this is an interesting point. No, like side of it. You'll still need in Well, and yeah, we're going towards a situation where hardware you can't afford hardware, so everyone thinks it's going to be a cloud subscription basically. Uh but well, okay, that that will the fact that it's running on two 5090s right now is is a cause for concern. Sure. Um but I guess I guess but I'm assume we're assuming that they will get it running on a single GPU and then yeah, you'll be running it on your hardware still. I'm operating in good faith for now until I see anything otherwise that Nvidia actually does intend for this to operate on hardware that I own. And up until now, I mean, I was I was really impressed. I think the 3060 runs Cyber Punk better today than it ever did. And I thought that was really cool. Um, it was part of No, it was it was longer than a couple weeks ago. It was when we did the Brazil PC because that was that was what our like pretty good cuz they might be putting those back into production and stuff like that. What I'm saying is what if what if you have to Yeah, someone in chat's getting what I'm putting down. give a rim. Uh what if what I'm saying is what if you have to subscribe to a certain level of DLSS and that's where we could be running into serious trouble because if Nvidia gets us hooked on them hooked on the the suits and yeah I mean the first character replace that they do there's like every comment on Reddit is like oh my god the first thing that they show is they give her like plumper lips and stuff like that and it's Like, okay, that's I mean, that's another weird thing. Like, when I was talking earlier about you're putting artistic control into like a hardware company's hands is like, yeah, you're also putting like beauty standards into like Jenzen's hands. Well, you're putting it into the the AI model that Nvidia engineers create trained on whatever data is going into it. I mean, and there's so much there's so much mystery meat uh that goes into training these AI models. I think that the the the fact that so much of the criticism was based around the AI slop look uh is very very interesting to me because there is an AI slop look. Yeah. Like and it feels like it and and it's funny because once the AI once the filter goes off, I'm looking at it again. It's like if you gave me that that that photo and was like this is a real guy and it's like a very styl that one's very obvious but like the Leon one the Leon one for me just stay there. It's like if you if you told me pause it in a sec. Okay, this is a moody still from a movie I'm working on and this is a guy. It's like okay I could believe that's a guy. This one doesn't look too bad but I think that the lighting is very low and there's a there's a lot of things in its favor. I think in general the AI slop look is people are having an issue with it because it represents the homogenized mean the like it's the average of all images totally and the extremes that make visuals and aesthetics and and all kinds of human expression interesting it is uh looks like Brendan Fraser a little bit. One of my things is like this this feels like I mean if we could okay if we could make every man look more like Brandon Fraser though. I would do that immediately. Hear me out. Hear me out this this to me feels like cool video game and this Hold on. Cool video game be movie immediately. Yes. Yes. Like it it's And I I I completely agree with your like but the hair looks so good. It it does. The hair looks realistic. But I mean, what what Okay, now I'm flipping. Now I'm on the other side. What can we expect what can we expect from games other than just at at best bem movie graphics, you know, like looking like a realistic be movie? No, I think I think there's a like this one as well. I had this feeling here as well. This feels or what's that? This feels like cool video game and then it it catches up and now this feels like a different game. See, I feel like this example feels especially egregious because I I'm not a Resident Evil fan. Maybe maybe like, you know, I'm I'm just not familiar with it as much, but I feel like the the RAW image looked pretty bad. Like I and I'm sorry like that looks that looks like a PS, you know three game maybe. Okay. I think that's probably your nostalgia glasses. The PS3 did not look I didn't have a PS3 so I wouldn't know but but it looks kind of bad and then it looks like too good. It looks like hyper real to the point where it's like are we supposed to be you know I don't know. Here's the bottom line which I think is is going to be kind of scary and uncomfortable for people. it's going to happen anyway. The people having this conversation, the people who are who are open to to to discussing it, um are ultimately not going to be the ones who or the people who care enough to talk about it are not going to be the ones that are dictating the direction this goes. For sure. Like I read an AI slop novel and every night immediately my brain turns off. I I I I I just can't. And a lot of gamers, if you're a if you're a discerning games as art hippie who, you know, loves the game for the sake of the game, um you're going to play an AI slop game with an AI slop filter on it and you're going to have the same like gut reaction where you your your brain's going to turn off and you're just going to disengage from it. However, lowest common denominator, people are going to turn those filters on. Yeah, I guarantee it. For sure. And I I fully expect in 5 to 10 years, like if anyone finds this clip or any of the other discussions about this, they're going to be like, "What were they freaking out about? That's so quaint." So quaint that they were so worried about that. Because everybody is going to be using AI filters on everything. I know that that's where we're going. and you're going to be able to play as Spongebob or Optimus Prime and whatever you want at any time. Uh, but we I think we'll have lost something in the same way that we have lost something by hooking crazily into social media instead of like being more present in the physical world. I actually think that Sorry, it doesn't change your overall point, which was I'm I'm actually pivoting a little bit. I don't I think game devs would actually draw the line at Nvidia creating a tool that allows you to substitute the main character for Spongebob or Optimus Prime because then they wouldn't be able to sell as many skins. Can you can you imagine Tim Sweeny's tweet if he couldn't sell like Peter Griffin skins for Fortnite anymore because people could just put their own Peter Griffin model into the game? I don't know. He'd probably be he I feel like he's super behind this. And also that I mean I don't want to put words in Tim Sweeny's mouth because you never know what's going to come out of it. So you there's just no point guessing. I do want to say that one thing I haven't said is that it is gen I feel like from a technical perspective it genuinely is impressive that this is apparently running in real time on two90s. On two9 well yeah on 1590s just the image model and just 1590. But I mean the scenes are pretty simple. They are. It's true. It's a lot of static. And in the soccer demo in particular, like motion is not you're talking about this without showing anybody. Luke, I mean, they're not really gonna show it. Uh, you have to go like frame by frame in that one. Period. And comma, go frame by frame on YouTube. Fun fact. Um, but yeah, the the soccer ball gets warped out of existence and at one point his arm disappears because he's moving fast. The fabric of his shirt is a mess with DLSS5 on. There's also some other fabric issues. And this is one of my problems, too, is I think a lot of people are going to turn this on, or it's just going to be on by default, and a ton of people never touch settings on anything. Um, and then they won't necessarily know. And it's just going to suck. And babies are going to grow up playing Call of Duty with this on. Imagine Imagine those babies as adults. Don't even know how soccer balls work. They'll think they just do that. They'll they'll they'll be looking at the screens and they look at the reload and they're like, "Gross." Where's the filter? Where's the shimmer? Reality sucks. reality is terrible. Anyway, uh Avons has a question for our discussion questions. Would you be fine with users watching your old content with an AI Yasify mode or AI Yasify filter? And I I I guess I I don't care if YouTube did that automatically. I'd be annoyed. That's the argument in my opinion. With 95% market share and this being on by default for a lot of people and Nvidia trying to push the direction of gaming and stuff like that. It's it's being put on to people. That's the core problem in my opinion. If you if you have a browser add-on um that that makes me look like the thumbnail uh for Wancho, I don't actually personally care at all. Whatever, dude. Um Dan, get on it. But but if YouTube is like, "No, this is just how it works now." Um yeah, I have a similar I feel like they wrote in their question, "I mean, why?" But still, I think Yeah, I think it's a matter of time, by the way. I mean, look at look at YouTube storage and bandwidth costs. If they could serve 360p video and just count on that everyone's going to have an NPU in their client device like so, you know, they're going to do it. We know that. So, that's bad, right? Like, we don't want that. But, like, I think I think this is why it's so interesting to me. It's like, are there people out there who seem to only care about the output? And as long as the output is pretty according to like their whatever you know the lack of taste that they have where they're like oh the high contrast pretty girl like it no you know no offense people who like high contrast pretty girls that's your preference but uh I feel like I feel like we're losing something cuz I think that I we should have real pretty girls with low contrast. I like my women like I like my displays high contrast and pretty. Oh gosh. Okay, I think I have to go now. So, that's like the first thing you send on Twitter or Tinder. What's your contrast ratio? What an opening line. Can you turn the saturation up? All right. Thanks, Riley. This This was great. This Thank you for joining us. Have a wonderful weekend. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm not your mother. I didn't. Nope. What? Okay. Yes. There's my ding. I think we can make it work. Bye bye. All right. Very cool. Wow. Should we uh I was just reminded of the thing that I wanted to talk about as part of our next topic. Linux challenge update. Oh, okay. Obviously, you guys are going to get a lot of this stuff in video two, part two, whatever it is we're calling it. I don't even I don't even know what the exact sort of uh ordering of all the various video things is going to be at this point. Uh but I had uh uh I think I'm I think I'm I'm 99.9% sure I'm allowed to disclose where I was. Uh I was in Japan visiting Sony. Okay. If that's all you say, I'm sure it's fine. Well, no, that's not always fine. But I'm I'm like very sure that Sony said it's okay that I was to say that I was in Japan visiting Sony. Um I I was there for something exciting. I think that's probably implied because I would not go all the way to Japan for something that's not exciting. Uh but anyway, long story short, I needed to output an HDR video and I needed something that I had licensing for. So, I used that test footage from our RE shoot, went back when we borrowed that camera to make a short circuit for like an RE cinema camera, and I realized I I went to plug in my laptop and I went, "Oh I'm on Linux right now. This was cool." on Kubuntu with the AMD drivers. So, I make no I make no promises for anything other than Getting HDR working was as simple as boop, apply, and then there was like a slider that honestly kind of limited my ability to get the best possible output. Don't worry about those details. Getting it working, looking HDR AF, was that easy? Yeah. Yeah, as far as my understanding goes cuz cuz Kubuntu Kabuntu whatever is KDE, right? So KDE as a bunch of people have said in flip chat has HDR support. The reason why I initially cringed is some of them don't like I I think Cinnamon doesn't. Um which is one of the big criticisms that people put on that. I just don't really watch HDR stuff so I don't really care. So So that was really cool. I'm not sure. And then this is another one. This is another one that's really cool. There have been so many aspects of this challenge where I've gone into it going, "Yeah, no, it doesn't. Oh my gosh, that is going to be a major challenge." Um, like for instance, you know, I'm running on a random laptop, and I really do mean random laptop. This came out like a week ago. It uses Stricks Halo, so super obscure hardware. Always a problem. Yeah. like using hardware that nobody the number of times I've had people ask me over the years remember I used to work at a computer store I've had a lot of people ask me what motherboard should I buy my answer the most common one almost always is whatever your socket is however many dim slots you want whatever form factor you want whichever one is selling the most because that's the one that the company is going to have out there being tested by end users in as any edge cases as possible and it's the one that they're going to have the most people shrieking at them if it's broken. So, you buy that one and you'll probably be fine. I did the opposite of that. I'm using the laptop that nobody is using. So, you're asking for trouble in those situations. So, I assumed that things like getting my keyboard backlighting working properly at all the various levels of brightness that it's supposed to work at might be a problem. I assumed that having my built-in display brightness slider working would be a problem. Not only does it work, but is that not the darkest freaking built-in display slider that you've ever seen? You can still see the screen isn't actually black. The granularity of the control is so good compared to Windows. And and the the the miracle of Linux is that somebody did that. Somebody was like, "You know what? Screens don't go dark enough. That's pretty up." And fixed it. They're probably that mad about it, too. Yeah, that's cool. And then and and then you go to do you go to do some basic thing and and it it blows up. What What did you What was one of the things you did that it blew up on? Uh hold on. Hold on. Oh yeah. Yeah. I couldn't get an Xbox controller paired to it. No matter how hard I tried, I just I just couldn't get an Xbox controller paired to it. I've had some Wi-Fi Interesting. Sorry. I've had some Wi-Fi connectivity issues, but I'm going to blame that on AMD's piece of garbage MediaTek Wi-Fi chip partnership because I've had a lot of Wi-Fi issues on Stricks Halo laptops on Windows as well. But yeah, I I could I so I could get my uh I had a ghillie kit. I brought two controllers with me on the trip. I brought a ghillie kit because I knew that I could use it with both the Switch and the computer. And then I also brought an Xbox controller so that I could play two-player games on the computer. So Ivonne and I tried this new uh co-op dungeon crawler game while we were on the plane. It was It was cool. What's it called? Uh it's not that important. I was just curious. Uh I'll know in a second cuz I'm just firing up team. Uh but anyway, I assumed I would be able to pair wirelessly the Ghillie Kit to either the Switch or the computer and then the uh the Xbox One to the to the computer. So I could do either two players there or we could have lots of players on the Switch, too. No matter what I did, was not able to Bluetooth pair that Xbox controller. Now, in fairness, I haven't looked super deep into it yet. So, there there probably is a solution somewhere, but I was on a plane. I didn't want to pay $30 for internet, so I didn't have the solution at hand. So, I just had to plug in one controller and then I was able to pair the the Ghillie Kit over Bluetooth, my earphones over Bluetooth. No problems. The Bluetooth works, just not with an Xbox controller. Uh, we were playing Bravery and Greed. Okay. I haven't heard of that. Yeah, it's it's pretty fun. Uh, the tutorial is one of those one of those game tutorials where they go, "Okay, here's how to do this. Now, here's how to do this. Now, here's how to do this, and here's how to do this, and here's how to do this, and here's how to do this. Okay, go." And the difficulty is just like you need to be able to do all of those things immediately. Um, it's it's kind of like a rogue light. Anyway, it's fine. Um, I see I was I was and it's it's recorded cuz I was streaming, but I uh I got a controller to pair instantly, but it wasn't it was like the uh it was one of the ones from one of the roundups you guys did like a Fly Digi or Fly Digi something. Yeah. Okay. I don't remember what it was, but that means that it had the dongle. Oh, yeah. Crystal plugged the dongle and it worked right away. Crystal Well, yeah, that would though. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm just uh Crystal asked, "Does your touchcreen work?" Yep. like the the number of Touch screen working's pretty cool actually. That's pretty wild, right? That's pretty cool. Like and then and then it just like and then it just like falls on its face on like the simplest thing. It's only the most common PC connected controller in the world and it I couldn't I couldn't connect it like okay Yeah. One one of the um does how does it connect? Does Windows have some like Microsoft crap and the Linux just doesn't have it by default? No, it uses Bluetooth. Oh, I mean they do, but also I could just pair it to my phone if I wanted. Yeah, like it totally works and like I can I can connect it on Steam OS. Yeah. Rest assured says Xbox uses the Xinput stuff from Windows and there has to be a translation layer added. I don't that should be after it connects though to map the controller or something, wouldn't it be? Yeah. Yeah. Xbox controllers work fine on Mac OS and iOS as well. like it's it's a thing. They they uh so you might be thinking of some of the older Xbox controllers that were proprietary only for their wireless. Modern Xbox controllers are you can just connect them as Bluetooth. I do believe they do show up as Xinput, but um for Steam games in particular, uh Steam will handle any kind of Xinput translation that you might need on whatever it is that you're doing. And the fact that it wouldn't pair at all. I'm not talking about I got it paired and then the inputs were map properly. It would not pair, which makes me think it's not X input. But yeah, I um I have some some Oh, right. One of my like custom challenges that I'm probably going to end up doing. I might have already said this. I'm not sure. Uh but I'm planning I I actually really like cinnamon. I'm pretty comfortable with cinnamon. But having been using Mint on my laptop, which I'm pointing here because my bag is here with my laptop in it. Um, cinnamon feels better on Mint. And I'm wondering if I should probably just use KDE, which is what people expect you to use when you're running Cache OS. So, I'm going to try to live swap out my desktop environments. Nice. I've tried that once. And just see how that goes. I tried the removal part. You tried? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, I'm going to see how that goes. I think that'll be interesting to do. Um, something that I did do was I decided that I wanted to continue my like five or 6 years long adventure of trying to 100% Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Um, my my knees have been feeling a little bit better. So, I was doing the treadmill walking thing and I was like, I want to try to play a game using a controller while treadmill walking because that might be easier. And um, I tried to install what is it even called now? Ubisoft Connect. Yeah, whatever it's called. Play. I just call it up play. Sure. Okay, I'll just call you Playup Play. I I I had a little bit of a hard time figuring out how to do it because I was searching for you play stuff and then realized that I was calling it the wrong thing. Uh but sure, yeah, you play. Um and I it was no problem to get up Playst installed, Ubisoft Connect, whatever it is. It was no real problem to install the game. I clicked play, it didn't launch. I went off to go do other things. I haven't continued to try to troubleshoot. I gave it literally zero minutes of troubleshooting. It just didn't work immediately. That is the first thing at all that hasn't worked immediately. Mind paradox says I have one laptop running Linux that won't connect to an Xbox controller. The other running the same flavor of Linux will. No clue why. It probably comes down to the Bluetooth hardware and just some kind of weird edge case. Uh, another thing is that I have put also zero time into this. Um, but I have noticed I there isn't enough of a symptom that I could like screen record it and prove it to anyone. Uh, my brain's just detecting freaking ghosts or something. I don't know. But the computer just starts to kind of feel weird. And then if I restart it, it's fine. So instead of sleeping my computer at night, I've just started shutting it down and then I just turn it on in the morning. But if I sleep it at night and wake it back up, it just feels weird. And I don't have a I don't have a good explanation for this, I don't know. I It's It just feels odd. It It feels like it's like maybe kind of slow or like I I don't know. but not slow enough that it like makes a ton of like I can't record it and show it to you, but it maybe I'm like maybe the menu opens a couple frames slower than it normally would or something like my brain can tell something's happening. I restart the computer, I'm like, "Ah, okay. It's it's like perfect now." Um, but it is no problem if I just shut the computer down at night because it will for sure be fine for a whole day. So, like if I just shut the computer down instead of sleeping it, it's no problem. Okay. I tried just leaving it on over the night instead of sleeping to figure out if it was sleep. No. It It was not just sleep. It has to be something to do with time. My onboard audio stopped working randomly. That's weird. Yeah. Uh and and you know what's funny is I have that in my open questions here. Onboard audio not working on my laptop. When did this happen? I feel like it was working at some point. Or was it? like I'm I'm like gas lit about my onboard audio and I looked just now and it is showing up. So I almost wasn't able Have you been updating? I uh I don't think I've updated since then. Okay. I almost wasn't able to do WAN show last week because if I had had to use my onboard audio with my mic like just with my uh my IM with the built-in inline mic, I wouldn't have had a working audio device cuz it just was not working. Oh, but because the road microphone that I bought had an audio device on it, I was able to use that. And then so I was really confused by that at the time cuz I thought it was working and then now I'm looking at it right now and I do have an audio device. Is it actually outputting anything though? Someone asked, is it a really slow memory leak? I don't know. I opened the extent of the work I did on it was I opened btop and it didn't look like it. Oh, this is not working. So, I have our stream there but not functioning. I have our stream on. I can see levels. Oh, wait. Wait. What is that? A mic. What? Oh, no. No. It is from that. It just It happened that the levels were jumping in time with me talking right now. It really was. That was super weird. I know you guys couldn't see that. It did literally exactly track his voice. That was Yeah, that was that was really trippy. It seemed like I was I was like what's happening right now? This makes no sense. Uh no, so so theoretically I have levels but I am not getting I'm not getting any kind of output. And again like you know to its credit the the function keys mute and everything all that works perfectly. I just am not getting any any audio output. Also on the on the mint side of things on my laptop just still no issues at all. It's been completely rock solid. At at this point in time, if I was going to recommend somebody a DRO, I've been I've been enjoy No, I know. I've been enjoying Cashi, it's been a fun experience. I would still do Mint, man. Like, if it's just so much easier. The like level of difficulty stepping into it is just so low. And I'm sure people just like last time will get pissed at me. And I just I don't care. It's It's so much easier. I showed uh I was showing mint to Emma and she was like, "Oh yeah, this all just like makes sense." And it's like, "Yeah, I Yeah, it's funny. I've been told a lot of times by various members of our audience that intuitive design is not a thing." And no, no, it it is. It is. And Mint Mint feels pretty intuitive as especially an older school Windows user. Like most of Emma's Windows experience is like XP Vista. And sometimes intuitiveness is context dependent relative. Yeah. Yes. U and so you know I think I think that came up when I was talking about the intuitiveness of something on iOS where someone was like that's intuitive to some people and I'm like well it's not iOS users because here's the all the other ways that iOS does this and it's not that way. So that's not what intuitive means. Um, why don't we jump into Sony? Oh, sorry. One quick last thing I would bring up. Uh, Mint has been like sleeping super effectively on the laptop. The battery usage seems lower than Windows was. Other It's been It's an actually really great. Something that I'm right now pretty confident is going to survive through this challenge is my laptop being on Mint. It's actually just been better. And like my argument the last time I tried this, which was a long time ago, switching a work computer over was that Linux got in my way too much. Even Teams has been pretty solid for me. Teams was weird for me for some reason. Uh I I Well, okay, I ended up figuring it out. My my I think Teams is just a bad program. Really? Tell us how you really feel. and and the like web appy teams for Linux thing. I don't think it's really like worse. It's just still teams which is like just still a problem. I don't think I don't think it's really like the the open source project that's the problem. It's just Teams. Why you got to keep attacking Teams? We just we just dropped 300 live viewers. Luke Teams fans. No, I'm kidding. It's it's a reporting glitch. Um, sorry. I'm not going to stop complaining about Teams, but uh, crap. What was I going to say? Yeah. No, it it has gotten in my way a lot less than Windows is now. So, it's actually switched. I think it would actually be for me at least, a productivity reduction. That's funny. To go to Windows. I wrote a whole paragraph that's basically this. Um, I think the general conclusion for me is that I could switch, but I won't. Uh, part of the problem, and and this is a midway conclusion. This is not the final conclusion, but it's where I'm sitting right now. Um, and I think that a big part of what makes switching difficult is your perspective. If you want Linux to be a replacement for your Windows PC, then you may end up disappointed. But if you think of Linux, and I mean from a gaming perspective, as more of a console, where you start with what is compatible with my console and you play that, then you may be ready if you can have that perspective. But I don't buy many consoles and I don't do the bulk of my gaming on them. Uh, and if you want the broadest compatibility, Windows is still king, especially if there's a social element to your gaming and your group wants to play something that is not Linux build. With all that said, this is the paragraph I wanted to read. I don't think I can go back to vanilla Windows anymore either. it has been so refreshing to not be bothered a single time over the last month to reaffirm once again THAT NO, I IN FACT DO NOT WANT Edge as my default browser. So nice. So, I think it's been oddly like calm. Like I actually think I'm more relaxed. Like this is just I I fired up my computer before the show and it just had all my stuff on it that I was doing. And nothing else. Well, I had that Kubuntu live boot thing, but someone gave me the command to fix that. I just haven't put it in a terminal yet. Yeah. Yeah. But that's that's the other thing too is if something like that happens, I believe that I can fix it. And it might be work to fix it, but I believe that I can fix it. So if I care enough, I'll go do it and it will probably stay fixed. And with Windows, if I remove recall or I say no to one drive or I do whatever, they're going to find some way. Windows is going to update, do something, it's going to worm its way back in. Second half 26. And I feel like I'm constantly under attack. Yeah. where with Linux it's like h I mean it's you know it's kind of a piece of sometimes but I'd rather work on my but it could get it's going to get better. I think that's the big one is Windows can be a piece of sometimes and it's constantly getting worse. It's going to get worse and Linux can be a piece of sometimes and it's constantly getting better and it's constantly getting better and it has gotten so much better than since the last time we tried. Holy crap. The updating experience on Mint is like amazing. The updating experience on on Kashi is also actually extremely easy and I really like watching the little Pac-Man thing go across. It's very fun. Uh it feels very uh like uh Windows XP def frag um in Cashy when you update uh you well in many you can do it many different ways but Pac-Man the like package installer and you can update with it and stuff like that. Um, it shows a little yellow C that goes across and eats the like dashes as it like progress bars. And I just I just like stuff like that. Uh, oh, some people are saying, "Don't leave us hanging on the game." I did say it. It's called Bravery and Greed. we haven't played a ton of it yet. We've played like an hour. Um, but it was it was fun what we played. It's a little it's a little hardcore gamer for Ivonne. Um, like even I was having trouble. Oh my god. I I started playing God of War. Um, man, how many hours am I into it? Okay, so I would say that I'm 5 hours into it because I have 5 hours of play time. I am maybe 1 hour into this game to redo stuff cuz it's so hard. Oh, interesting. I've never played a God of War game, so Oh, no. It's very different. So, um, the combat is not, uh, you know, press light attack, heavy attack, block. It's like, okay, well, you could be in two completely different fighting modes with your axe and without your axe. And depending which opponent you're playing against, you may want to be using the axe or not using the axe. And when you're using the axe, here's all of your special button press combinations that you might want to use. Don't forget you need to time your blocks exactly perfectly. Here's your button to swivel around and face the other way immediately. And when you have your axe, don't forget you can throw your axe, but also here's all the other ways that you can contort your hands in order to uh by the way, you have to fight like four things at once. And they don't like wait around for you to be ready. Uh I'm not playing on the hardest difficulty because I thought that would be crazy. I'm playing on the like just like give me a challenge difficulty and it is absolutely kicking my ass. So, um yeah, I um You're playing on a controller? Yeah. Are you not supposed to? I mean, no, you are. I just That game really sold me on like weapon feel in video games. Oh, really? Axe is probably one of the like best feeling weapons and like especially when you're playing with a controller and the sound mixed with the haptics and everything. It just feels meaty when you throw it and you catch it again. It's I have my my my bro back. Like it just I don't know. It felt great. Well, I'm uh you know an hour into it. I've made a little more than 5 hours into the field. I've made a little more than an hour of progress. Uh basically I'm at the point now where I'm figuring out that okay, I will need to use every single move in this tech tree. Not only I will need to use them, but I will need to be muscle memory familiar with them, which I'm still deciding if I can commit to in current year for a video game or if I just need to ratchet down the difficulty. So, we'll see how it goes. Anyway, I've been playing it exclusively on Linux. You want to know what's kind of funny? Uh, imagine playing a PlayStation game on Linux. Like, just seriously though, if you told me 10 years ago Yeah. Yeah. That would I'd be like, "Come on." Yeah, for sure. That is wild. That's crazy. That's wild. And it's not like some crazy Well, it kind of is, but it's not some crazy like emulation thing like you're not emulating a PS1 in order to play it. Yeah. It's It's a very It's a currentish God of War game that runs on current generation console. I know it came out in 2018. Stop it. What I mean is that it's not a PlayStation 1 game. It's not something that you can just emulate on a potato. Um it's a it's a beautiful looking game and it's just flipping running on Kabun 2 on my laptop. Stricks Halo is so cool, dude. Like it's so cool. I I cannot Yes. I cannot love Stricks Halo hard enough and hate how much it costs more. Um and Oh, sorry. You were going to say something. Uh, I have way less I I've I've just been covering. Okay, so Slay Spire 2, I haven't really looked into it, but there's no like windowed mode. And normally, if you've seen me play a windowed mode, I usually play That's right. Because you're busy playing that instead of actually readying up in the lobby. Yes. Yes, I'm familiar with your Usually, I play it in like a very, very small window over top of the chat box where we're all telling you to ready up. Yes. Yes, I've seen that. That was unintentional. My bad. Um, but usually it'll just sit on like a side monitor Yes, he's that guy, Mr. No, I did it literally once. I'm sorry. Um, but it it uh it sits on a side monitor and I'll often just ignore it. It'll be very common that I'll finish a run and it'll be like, "Oh, your run time was like 40 hours because I just didn't play it." Um, and Spy 2 is full screen. So, I just I'm just like, "Well, okay. I this is my like oh I have five minutes I'll throw some cards and then ignore this for eight hours game and that actually like I these days I just put stuff on top of it. Is there a weird hacky way to run full screen games though? There's got to be probably I just haven't bothered. Um but it's been interesting that like you know Slay the Spire 2 is out. I'm going to play that instead of Slayer 1. But um my overall playing of Slay the Spire, if you look at Steam hours, has like plummeted cuz I just not even contributing to the concurrence. Yeah, it's it's not as easy. It's people like you that are the reason that it didn't beat maybe to be honest. They were that close to Silk Song and couldn't do it because of this man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The the worst example of that was I went I think uh this was when I used to have to leave my computer on for work reasons all the time and I think I went on one of those like I went to Taiwan and then took a week off trips and came back and it was still running. Nice. I was just like, "Oh crap." Um Oh, right. Holy crap. We really should have called out CW a lot earlier. I actually meant to do it right at the beginning of the show because there is so much going on with Creator Warehouse and LTD Store right now. This week we launched our system error collection. Luke, do you want to bring up the site? Yeah, apparently other people have it. Maybe I tried to early and they updated it or maybe my system's just being weird, but other people have it windowed mode. I don't know. Uh uh anyway, sorry. Which one? System error. Yep. There's no link. I'll just go to the site. I believe in you. The first item in this collection is the error message hoodie, which is inspired by all the inventive ways that your computer sh itself. This is very swag, isn't it? It's very swaggy. Is that cool or what? It looks sick. Freaking love it. You got the little dinosaur with the cacti. You got the uh 404 error. like, oh, what a cool like if you know, you know, hoodie that just also just looks really cool. And if you don't know, then it just looks like a cool hoodie. Um, we've got the Chrome dinosaur, an overheating PC, uh, Willie, our whale mascot. Did we name him Willie? Oh, man. I mean, I guess that makes sense. And a very mentally stable cat. Uh, all packed into one slightly chaotic design. Uh, plus it's printed on a 100% cotton French terry hoodie, so it's actually comfortable enough for everyday wear. Isn't that awesome? Freaking love it. The next item in the collection is the Just Rage Quit T-shirt. This design is our take on that '90s era assistant. You know the one, but ours is a little more unhinged. We um we had to really craft the copy for this one so that it didn't sound like go kill yourself. That would be an AI. Yeah, we we we so we ended up with just rage quit to make it more computery gamery. H. Finally, not last, but least, we have our boot up toaster t-shirt. This one's a reference to that old PC you had when your siblings called dibs on the nice one. The one that sounds like an airplane taking off but struggles to open a web browser. Like always, it's printed on our classic shadow blank tease. And you can shop the entire system error collection at lmg.gg/ I always like the little twirl one. one cuz I I think it's really cool that you can like actually really see the fabric and now they're doing that. Now you can really really see the fabric. I love our blank t-shirts. The team does such a great job. But wait, there's more. The tax write off sale is back. It's tax season, baby. So, we went through our warehouse and pulled out a bunch of stuff that has been taken up space and needs to be written off. That includes mystery screwdrivers, mystery shirts, mystery tall shirts. Wa! Get a deal on tall t-shirts. Actually, just do that. We also have used but like new bags. We have mystery water bottles. We've got some of those retro monitor pet caves that we found in a corner somewhere. Uh those have been actually really popular. Um so take advantage of this sale and uh yeah, some of these things are discounted probably a little more than they should be. What the $120 off $150 item. Yeah, don't worry about that. It's only a Thunderbolt 3 dock, so it's an older Thunderbolt in here twice. Oh, but it checks out. I was about to clear it. Um is it just display port? Okay. Um, they cost the same. Yeah, some of these are discounted a lot. Uh, you can think of the sale as kind of like the buying RAM without mortgaging your house sale, says my copy here. Okay, sure. You can shop the sale at lmg.gg/taxoff 2026. We got the onesie in there. We got the washed crew neck. It's tax writeoff season, baby. Screen. So, we got a few screen saver party shirts in various sizes. Some of these, not every size is going to be available, so make sure you guys are checking quick and getting your hands on uh Yeah, I was trying to I was trying to There was a uh Let me see if I can find it. Oh, right. And as always, now is a great time to place an order because you can also send a checkout message. Uh do you want to show them how to do it? Just add something to cart. It is in stock. What the Oh, yeah. That's a really nice shirt. Did this get restocked like today? It has like a nice stretchy fabric and it has a little lanyard thing in the pocket so you can put your ID card on it and stuff. Yeah, I wanted something that cuz the stretchy fabric I wanted something that was comfortable but a little bit sharper just for when I need to wear that. I was shopping on the store. I was going to grab one of these and I thought EXO was sold out but apparently it's not. Throw it in the cart. Oh no, it's this is the US store, right? Well, throw it in the cart and show people how to send a check out message. There you go. In the cart. You'll see this interface when we're live. It's the best way to uh send a message into the show. We believe that throwing money at random streamers um I mean if you want to do it that's cool but if you throw it at us you should get high quality merchandise in return. So go ahead place your order. Your message will go to producer Dan who will reply to it or pop it up. There we go. Like down there kind of like that. Or who will curate it for me and Luke to respond to. So, uh, Dan, do you have a few coms for us to respond to? I do. Oh, you do? My goodness. We've got lots of people are into the sales. People placing orders today. Yeah, global store sell. That makes sense. Hi, LLD. Uh, a couple questions about the Whaleand VIP. If I fly to BC, will the custom PC include component boxes so I can disassemble and ship at home? Also, can VIP and bring your own computer plus sit together? Guess that's a plus ones. Oh. Uh, the Wow, those are really good questions. Um, those are good questions. I don't think it includes all the boxes, but I believe we could accommodate taking the GPU out at least. Um, cuz the this the systems are shipped to us. So, like I think we're partnered with Star Forge on them. So, they're they're shipped to us. They obviously got here, so they should be safe to ship. Um, the case box is included. Uh, oh. Oh, look at that. Hobbs is in the chat. Of course he is. Uh, it says Star Forge handles the shipping. There you go. So, there you go. Uh, Star Forge apparently gets the systems back from us, make sure they're good, and then rehips them. That's pretty sick. Apparently, that's how it worked in the past at least. I think that's cool. As for a VIP and a BYOC Plus sitting together, I don't know. I don't know. I think you might have to contact support on that one. They'd have to get they'd have to get back to you. Possible like if support I don't know. It might be possible for you to sit on on the end. VIPs also get twice as much space. So realistically, if you put like a non- whale ticket, if you were just willing to have your space and put another person in it, I couldn't see us saying no. That would seem pretty. We don't have power though and stuff. I think we'd probably be okay. We could probably figure something out, but just check. Yeah, definitely check with uh with with the Whailand team. Okay, Mr. Dan. Oh yeah, I got another one here. Then I just got a couple of kittens. Any advice on how to organize my setup to make it safer for them and more reliable for me? Oh boy, do I ever have the thing for you.Oop gear. Magnetic cable management. See this? This is your life today. This is your life with all your cables out of reach of your cat. Seriously, aesthetics is one reason to have all the cables up off the floor and like like channeled up the leg of your desk and like carefully tucked into everything. Pets, pets and babies. That's the other big one. They are so much less tempted to play with them and chew on them when they're just all all managed. And when you do it magnetically, the it it's it's not better. It doesn't look better than using little plastic zip ties or doing whatever it was that you were doing already. And it's really expensive. So, how could I possibly sell this solution? Because when you do it with magnets, it will stay done. That's the difference. As soon as you go to change something, when you used little plastic zip ties or whatever, you go, "Oh crap. Okay, I need to unable." You're not going to redo it. You're going to be able to motivate yourself to do it one time. And if you do it with magnets one time, then when you go to change something, there's no excuse. You just and you're good to go. It's awesome. I love it. My with the with the move back in, I haven't recable managed everything. And when I put my desk into like Omega standing mode because not only is it standing, but it's also standing while I'm standing on a tall. Oh, right. On your uh treadmill. Yeah. So, it's like super tall. Um, all the cables were tangling and Eva walked in the room and was just like m I was like, "Okay." And it does kind of suck, but I'm not starting from zero because the pads are still there. So, it won't be as bad this time. Nope, it won't. It'll still take a bit, but it won't be as bad. Girol actually has another great suggestion that could save you some money. You could use just a couple of the larger MCMs to attach your baby to the wall. That will keep them away from all the dangling wires. That actually you could use that on a cat as well. I figure if you have four of them, you just do one for each leg and then they shouldn't be able to go anywhere. Extra large for the tail. Not actually pet or childcare advice. Um, are cats magnetic? No. No, they're not. But you'd use the arch and you'd kind of pin down the leg with it is sort of what we were thinking here. Kidding. Kidding. Kidding. Kidding. Kitty. Kittying. kid. Don't worry about it. Uh the point is uh we're doing another topic now. Let's talk about ooh Sony issuing an update for the PlayStation 3 nearly 20 years post launch. Whoa, that's right. Update 4.93 just hit on a console that launched in November of 2006. The patch notes just say improves system performance, the same vague wording that was used for the last three updates. Uh but it is believed that the real purpose is almost certainly anti- jailbreak measures and a Bluetooth key uh Bluetooth Blu-ray key uh encryption key renewal, which is especially relevant now that Netflix on PS3 has been discontinued, leaving physical media as one of the few remaining use cases for owning the console outside of retro game. Aside from retro gaming, I have to say, I'm going to interject for a second. I I understand the market trend for physical media is that it's going down. Mhm. I think it's a lot of it is because there isn't really as many options anymore. And uh oh, two kind of two things here. Um, and I…

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