Tech Over Tea - #105 Escape The Real World With Tech & Gaming | Solo

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

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Good morning, good day, good evening. I am as always your host, Brody Robertson, and today we are back for episode 105, Tech of a T. I've redone this intro like three times already, and somehow the one that I'm deciding, you know what, I'm not going to do another take, that's the one I completely screw up on. But it is what it is, and the show must go on. Speaking of the show must go on, there is one thing i want to talk about before we get into the main topics i unless there is some sort of linux or tech or something related to what i talk about on this podcast to do with the whole ukraine russia situation it probably

won't be brought up on the podcast basically basically because I don't really have any idea what's going on. I can see what's happening on Twitter, I can see what's happening in articles, that's basically the extent of my knowledge on the situation. This is not a geopolitics channel, it's nothing like that. There are plenty of channels out there that will give you whatever spin you want to see or they'll give you some sort of like very But not by very unbiased take that one There are plenty of channels out there that'll do that. This is not that channel So if you expect to see me mention it then that's basically the only mention it's going to get There may be issues regarding supply chain, especially with

some of the rare earth metals being used in GPUs and other various system computer components. But besides that, for now, there's nothing I really have to say on the situation. It's a bad situation, and I think we can all agree on that. Regardless of what else you think about it, it's a bad situation. But speaking of things that are not that, that are related to the podcast, the other day a new trailer, I guess

the first trailer? The first trailer for the new Pokemon games came out. This is not a good segue from that topic, but we have to get away from it as quickly as possible, so we're going to do what we have to do. So the new Pokemon games, Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet. From my understanding, I don't know if this is confirmed. This is just from what people were saying on Twitter. I just realized I hadn't fixed my overlay. We're going to do that right now. And now you see my notes. So you can see all the topics we're doing with the rest of the podcast. That's not what I want to show you. I want to show you this one.

From my understanding, from what I've seen, it's supposed to be like a... Okay, no, it says it right here. The region is based on Spain and Portugal, and it looks really really good so a lot of people were saying things like Pokemon Arceus Pokemon Arceus whatever you want to call it that was basically a it looked like it was a beta basically the game didn't look very good what I think because that game was developed alongside these games. What I think the case is with these games is that game was effectively developed as a, I guess, a tech demo? A tech demo for what the direction of Pokemon could be going into the future.

Because if you go and watch the trailer, which I can play here because nintendo will get very uh strike heavy with it it looks a lot like that world like it obviously the models and all that are different but the the way you're going to interact with the world is going to be very similar but with a more traditional um traditional Pokemon gameplay style in, in line with something like Sword and Shield, but a step up from that. And a lot of the animations from what we saw in the trailer look considerably better. Now, that's not to say that we won't have another, another Wingull situation. If you don't know the Wingull situation, I'm going to show you the way the Game Freak developers the Wingull situation, I'm going to show you the way the Game Freak developers thought that a Wingull should fly. This is the case for a lot of bird Pokemon, actually. Wingull flying animation. See if I can find... Yeah, there's a video of someone redoing the animation to make it look better. Yeah, yeah, here we go.

Bird. This is how birds move. They just... do this. But because you're not moving around, it's just sitting there, floating back and forth like this. It looks ridiculous,

and I have no idea why anyone thought that was a good idea. And it's like that for all of the bird Pokemon, even though like, you know, we can see in the older sprites, like black and white, for example, you know, wings bent, like, you know, birds when they flap their wings. But it seems like, hopefully, judging by what we've seen, we've only seen like a couple of Pokemon so far, one of them being a Survivor.

The animation looks better. It looks like it is on par or better, considering that Arceus was a tech demo, basically, with that game. It's going to have a lot of different Pokemon that game had, but there is going to be plenty of animation they can reuse from that, which is great for game freak because game freak doesn't like putting in effort but i look i'm probably gonna end up buying a switch soon because i've just been looking that there's been a lot of games coming out

that have made me want to buy a switch and if this ends up being a good game i'll probably buy it but there's already other good games that i want to play on the Switch anyway. So it's just a matter of me, you know, sitting down and saying, I'm going to spend this money and actually buy the thing. But it is what it is. Anyway, you probably saw these when I scrolled down just before, but we have images of what the new starters look like. just before, but we have images of what the new starters look like and their names are

Sprigatio, Sprigato, I'm gonna say Sprigato, Fuecoco and Quaxley, I guess it's Quaxley, yeah I guess it'd be Quaxley because it's a duck, you get it? It's funny. So we have a grass cat this time, as opposed to a fire cat. But, I don't know. First form still looks fairly similar to... What was the... I don't remember what the English name is. Litten. Yes, Litten. That's the one.

Look, it's a grass cat. And when you have a cat, it looks fairly similar on its first form. There are certainly distinctive features, like the tail looks different. It's still, at the end of the day, a grass cat. So it's a matter of what it's going to look like with its further evolutions to see whether it's going to actually look kind of cool.

I kind of want to see what happens with this thing though. I don't know what this is. I don't have any clue what this is. What animal this is supposed to be based on. Is this a fucking dinosaur? I don't know.

All I know is I probably will pick the fire starter because it looks really stupid i don't the uh the the water starter is probably going to evolve into something similar to like a um what's the evolution of Farfetch'd Pokemon. I only know the Japanese names and I, I'm sure that most people don't. Like I know some of the non, uh, the non Japanese names from like when I played in the past, but, uh, what is the evolution called? Uh, but ever since watching the anime of the newer stuff, my

brain... There's nothing in my brain besides the Japanese names for newer Pokemon. Let's see. Where the hell is... Oh my god. There's so much information on this page. Show me the evolution. If I search for evolution on this page, it evolves... No, shut up

Don't tell me it doesn't evolve Sirfetch'd there we go Shut up Sirfetch'd That's the Japanese name Negiga Knight Anyway I imagine it will evolve Into something similar

It looks like you know a presidential it looks like a presidential bird doesn't it? a presidential bird, it looks like a knightly bird you might say I don't know, if I do end up playing this I'm going to pick the Firestarter just because

I want to, I have to look at its face. It's adorable. But one thing that a lot of people have been sort of not super happy with is the way the character models look.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet main character. So, I feel like Arceus did a really, really good job at making the character models look good. If the rest of the game looks trash, the character

models look really good, you have a lot of customization, and it really fits with the Pokemon art style. Like, you take those models, and you say say this is from Pokemon, I'd be like, yeah, yeah, probably is. That makes a lot of sense. But... They're not... They're not

great. Where is the picture? Show me the picture. There's probably going to be customization. But even so, show me the damn pictures, dammit. Yeah yeah here we go the the character art looks fine it's the 3d models that are a problem someone described this to me as basically the apple emoji and you know what they kind of do look like apple emojis, don't they? Where's the other one?

There's a picture for both the male and the female character. But she's not showing it here. Is that going to show me the biggest size? Yeah, here's the male one. It's not good. It's really not good. But then look at the ground. The ground...

This is clearly a beta trailer or an alpha trailer, so I'll give it that. But, like, I really hope they completely scrap these character models, because they don't fit what we have sort of established as a Pokemon game. If they'd basically just taken the models from Legend of Arceus, I don't think anybody would complain. Like, you can make some really, really cool looking characters in that game. Uh, Legend of Arceus character customization. Uh, here we go like look you look at this and you're like yeah that fits

the Pokemon universe like I don't see anything I don't see anything out of the ordinary with that whatsoever like that's sort of the that's sort of the direction you'd expect the series to go in if it is going in this like more

if we're joining the 21st century basically if we're gonna have things like battles happening not in this battle screen if we're gonna have things like moving around during a battle if we're gonna have things like you know exploring a world not being on a grid sword and and Shield and then Legend of Arceus, I feel like did that style well. But at the end of the day, this is still like a beta or an alpha trailer, so there's still plenty of time for them to redesign this. Honestly, I'm surprised they did this because this involved work from Game Freak. Game Freak had to put effort into designing these models

rather than just using something they've already made which I would like you to put effort in other things, but hey effort in some way is certainly an improvement from Game Freak. That's uh, that's certainly something. Game Freak is basically... I would say Game Freak is the laziest game developer on the planet. Like, since Red and... I guess Red and Green were the Japanese versions. Since Red and Green, they have been making the same game every single time.

Sure, we've had spin-off games, but the mainline Pokemon games have been the exact same format every single time. Yes, they've had to be some reworks in art style and updates to the combat and new gimmicks added to the combat, like Zed moves and Mega Revolutions and whatever the hell it was called. What was the gimmick in Sword and Shield? The Gigantic Pokemon.

Gigantamax, Gigantamax, whatever you want to call it. Actually, no, that was for the special ones. Whatever it was called for the non-special pokemon the the giant pokemon basically but the whole you collect eight gym badges you go fight the elite four you fight the champion and then maybe there'll be some post-game content like that format has been the same. You have six Pokemon in your party, you have eight Shems, and actually eight Shems have been changing, but the format's been basically the same. It's sort of the same problem that FIFA has. You just re-release the same game, every so often you give it a bit of a graphics update and you give it a bit of a polish, but

at the core it's the same game and there's not really that much room for creativity in that fashion. But if we're going to be sort of changing up the way Pokemon works, I'm happy with that. From my understanding, I haven't played it yet, but from my understanding, Legend of Arceus is a good game. It's a bit grindy, but it's a good game. It may need more content, but overall, it's a format that works.

And it takes, you know, the idea of it makes catching a Pokemon actually require some level of skill as well. Not like high level skill, but you at least need to be able to aim at something. So I kind of hope they keep that mechanic

because that actually is a good mechanic. If you take that mechanic that was from, like, Pokemon Go and then Let's Go, and you keep the ability, you keep the combat aspect as well, and you make it, like, an actual Pokemon game,

all of that sounds good. All that sounds good. Like, I don't have... Like, it's... I'm very much extrapolating what we see here, but at the end of the day, that's what the podcast is. Right, I mentioned the actual character designs

for the characters, and there was a picture of it right there, and now it is gone. Where did it go here someone's comparing them with oranges and grapes i don't know why but like the character designs when they are the 2d character uh like 2d character art looks good like it looks great it looks like a pokemon game i don't have anything to say there, but Those 3d models are not good And I really hope that's not how all the characters in the game are going to look because holy shit if they do Man that's going to be a

It's going to be an art style that is hard to get used to. Even with like Diamond and Pearl, even in that case, like the, the, the remakes, the, um, Shining,

Brilliant Diamond. I always get those backwards. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Even in that case with the art style looking a little bit, a little bit funky. Um, yeah. It's, it's still, it still fits generally with what you, with what you understood as, as, as Pokemon. I guess, I didn't know how Pokemon Snap looked,

but the art style in Scarlet and Violet is sort of like a worse version of, uh, of Pokemon Snap. It's sort of taking that style for some reason. I'm not really sure why, rather than going with the mainline style or Arceus. I don't, like, and then not doing it well. Like, that's the other thing. It's taking that style from Snap and then doing it badly. Like, what are you doing? I don't, I don't understand. But that's enough for Pokemon now. I want to talk about something else. Um, I, I took a break from 14 over the weekend. My internet has been playing up. I'll talk more about that in a bit, but I decided to take a break from 14 and play something I've been meaning to play for quite a while. I finally started playing through this right...

Oh, my monitor just turned off. This right here. Oh, there we go. Ni No Kuni 2 Revenant Kingdom. Is the monitor going to turn back on? Is it actually going to... I'll pause for a moment and get the monitor back on. Is it actually going to... I'll pause for a moment and get them on the back on.

This is a really sketchy cable, and I'm going to replace it, because it does that every single time I slightly bump it. But anyway, Ni No Kuni 2. I've mentioned it before, I think I have on the podcast at least. I am a really, really big fan of the first Ni No Kuni game. I would say it's probably, it's probably my favorite JRPG. If you don't know, it's got this, uh, this Ghibli art style, and the general idea is you're

this kid who has been sent to this other world, and you have this, I guess it's, the combat system is a mix between real-time and turn-based. It's got a turn-based combat interface, but it's real-time combat, and it's got this, I guess, Pokemon-style capture mechanic as well. You do all your fighting through these minions you capture, and you capture them by battling them, basically. But this game is a lot about his journey through this world trying to find out like what's happened actually you know i'll read the description of the game let's see nino cooney two uh i know nino cooney one 1. Uh, let's see. Let's see if we can find a good description.

Give me... Uh, here we go. Players control Oliver, a young boy who sets out on a journey to save his mother. The game is played from a third-person perspective, and its world is navigated on foot by boat or on a dragon. Uh, by boat? Wait, on foot, by boat, or on a dragon. There we go.

While players navigate Oliver throughout the game's world, other characters can be controlled during battles against enemies. During these battles, players use magical abilities and creatures known as familiars, which can be captured and tamed. Okay, that went off from, like, explaining what the story was to, like, explaining the mechanics.

Basically, it's your typical third party action rpg but it has this this minion battle mechanic and there's a party system and the party have their own way of doing combat and all that fun stuff but ninokuni 1 Ni No Kuni 2 are very, very, very different games. So both games start with the main character being Isekai'd. In the first game, you actually go back and forth between the, I guess, regular world and whatever the other world was called. I don't remember what it was called in the first game. In the second game, you don't.

That's not the big difference though. The first game is very focused on the characters. Focused on the characters journey through this world. How they sort of understand this world. How they want to you know they want to save their mother. want to, you know, they want to save their mother. Ni no Kuni 2 is a very different focus. It starts off trying to do that same focus of the first game, but it does it really badly, like really badly. So the main character gets isekai'd, his name is Roland, he is the president of some country, probably America, doesn't really matter what country it is. So he gets isekai'd, and instantly he's faced with Evan, this cat boy. He's faced with Evan the cat boy,

who is the king of, the English name is Ding Dong Del, because Ni No Kuni likes to give dumb puns in a translation, because the Japanese version also had dumb puns. I don't know what the Japanese name of the city is, or the country is, but anyway. Evan is the king of Ding Dong Dell, and you get Isakai literally in the middle of a

coup. So the kingdom is being overthrown by the mouse people, who for whatever reason also live in the cat kingdom. I don't know. Cats and mice live in this kingdom in harmony except they had a civil war like 50 years ago. Just accept it.

But you're from like regular Earth where there are not cat boys. You just see this cat boy and you're like, oh, okay, I'm gonna help you. You're not gonna ask why there's cats here? Nothing like that. Nope. Okay, it's fine

Then you like five minutes later are shooting mice in the head like Like mice knights in the head with your gun because you kept your gun with you Because sure No one's questioning the gun either apparently guns are in this world, but you're the only person who seems to use a gun Also doesn't matter. Basically, this game doesn't make any fucking sense until chapter three or chapter four. So during the first chapters, as you get overthrown, overthrown out of this,

you get the kingdom overthrown. You get ejected from the city. You like escape. You escape just barely with your life and then Evan's like you know what I'm gonna start a new kingdom because that certainly doesn't put a direct target on you

and make the old kingdom send someone to try to kill you but apparently no one tries to do so at least up until where I'm at so he goes and says I'm gonna make my new kingdom and you basically go on this journey to build the kingdom up until where I'm at. So he goes and says I'm gonna make my new kingdom and you basically go on this journey to build the kingdom. You're building the English name is Evermore, I think the Japanese name is Estavania? But the

journey from then on is you meeting people and recruiting them to join your kingdom because as we know every king goes around doing side quests for people to make them join their city that's how that works that's how it's always worked the combat is the combat is probably it's i don't know how to describe the combat because it's very similar to the first game, but in a, it's got a different focus on who is doing the combat. In the first game, Oliver can use magic and he can fight, but Oliver isn't your, your main method of doing damage. You want to be using your minions because they 99% of the time do more damage.

In the second game, though, you don't have minions and you're directly fighting. Oh, that's the other thing about Roland. Roland, apparently in the world he's from, everybody's just trained with a sword. Because he's perfectly fine using a sword that just picks up off the ground. And no questions about it. Like, he's doing fucking flips and shit, literally at the start of the game. So just accept it.

But the combat is... It's your typical, like, action RPG combat. But it's got some issues. So it doesn't have animation cancelling, which means that while you do have a roll, and the roll does have iframes, which is great, and you have a block, and the block has, like, the block blocks stuff, if you're in the middle of an attack, you're in the middle of a, like, ability or anything, it doesn't let you block, it doesn't let you dodge, so't let you dodge so it sort of

slows down the combat compared to even something like dark souls like dark souls has animation cancelling and honestly any action up if you're a developer if you're an indie dev please add animation cancelling to your combat if it doesn't have it it makes your combat feel sluggish, because a lot of games make it a core feature of the game, and when it's not there, it does, like, you do notice it missing, like, you do notice it missing. Sure, it's not realistic to be able to, like, be in the middle of swinging a hammer, and then instantly block, but I don't care if it's realistic, I want the combat to feel fluid. But I don't care if it's realistic. I want the combat to feel fluid.

So, I'm playing the game on Expert. Now, I usually don't play games on the hardest mode that is available. Because I want the game to be fun. I realise though, that if I didn't play this game on Expert, it would be way, way too easy. I've certainly lost fights before. But most of the lost fights before, but most of the fights I've, actually no, all of the fights I've died in have been these like super enemy fights that I'll explain in just a bit. So Expert sort of, it does make the enemies more spongy and make them do more damage, but it makes them spongy and do more damage at the point where they probably should be at. I tried the game on normal mode and everything dies basically instantly. It's so

fucking easy that I would have gotten bored within like probably the first couple hours. Also, Expert, this is actually a really nice thing and I wish more games did this. If you're on Expert, you actually get better loot drops. So, in some ways, expert actually makes the game easier, because you get way overgeared really quickly. So, like many RPGs, especially MMOs, it has a loot rank system, so gear has colors, and obviously, better colors, better gear, all all that fun stuff and right at the start of the game like you're being showered with loot literally after every fight early in the game you open up your menu to swap out your gear oh this is the other cool thing about the combat so the combat is based around having three main weapons equipped. So you have this thing, I can't remember, it's some sort of band.

But the idea is you have weapons stored in this band and you can swap between them whenever you want. And you want to swap between the weapons because you have this gauge. And when this gauge hits 100%, you can use a special version of your attack and do like bonus damage, like a special version of your abilities and do like bonus damage like a special version of your

abilities so you have this like i think evan has this thing called king spin i want to say is what it's called where he like his sword lights on fire he like swings it around the circle when everything gets knocked back and when you are at 100 that does more damage and more knockback and all that stuff. So basically you go around between these kingdoms trying to recruit people and usually the side quests you get are pretty straightforward. It's like hey bring me some grass green thread that was one of the ones I had or bring me this item or do this task for me there have been some that have been more exciting like there was this one kid who he was a I guess he was a recruited he was a junior knight he was on a junior guard not a knight he was just recruited shortly ago and he's acting like he's this full guard. And he is like in control of the city.

Every time a tourist comes in the city, he accosts them, asking them for their papers. This city doesn't need papers to get into. And he's basically just being a nuisance. So you sort of follow him around, asking him what he's doing. He finds this couple. They're down this like side alley. He's like, oh, they're trying to overthrow the city. Like, no, they're just having a date.

Then you go into the casino and like oh this this guy running the table here he's trying to cheat people out of money it's like no that's that's not happening so you go and do his task he eventually joined your city now i want to i want to talk about one of the uh one of the type of tasks fighting the like super enemies. So these are enemies you'll see around the world. Where they have this purple fog around them. And when you go up to fight them. The game will specifically tell you.

Hey this is a really strong enemy. Are you sure you want to fight this? And you don't want to fight it at the level that it says the enemy is. So there's this one enemy that's level I think 22. It's this slime enemy and when you fight at level 22 you do one damage and then one damage and then one damage and it has thousands of health so you're never going to kill it. So you want to come back after you have like better gear and you're doing like

30 and 50 damage and can actually kill it. The problem, this is another problem I have with the combat system. Because you don't have that animation cancelling, the combat against some of the enemies feels really weird. So against those slimes, the slimes don't telegraph most of their attacks. They do telegraph their jump attack and they telegraph their spit attack. But they have this like spin attack where they'll like, it'll like spin in a circle and hurt everything around it. No telegraph for it whatsoever. So basically the way you fight this thing is you get one hit in, roll out, one hit, roll out, one hit, roll out. Because you have no idea when the attacks going to happen and there is no way to block it or dodge it in time

when the attack actually does occur. You just want to not be there when the attack happens. But then there's other enemies like the... there's a super version of the Skelliplasm, which is basically a big skeleton with a sword. It's basically a Dark Souls boss. It's really easy, because it really telegraphs. It will run at you, and just before it hits you, it does this big swing and so whoop, hits the ground. Or it will do this swing where it's like slice, slice, and you just like roll behind it. It's literally a Dark

Souls boss, and I've fought plenty of these before. It has a lot of health, and it will literally one-shot you if you're at like level 30, even though it's level 23, but if you just don't get hit, you're fine. Oh, that reminds me though. So this game, obviously, like most RPGs, has an item system, and you can use items during combat. But it's got a really nice change to that, that I don't see most games have, which is limiting the amount of items you can use in combat. The only game I've seen do this is Genshin. Sorry, my throat's playing up today. In Genshin, I believe when you use certain items, there is like a time limit until you're allowed to use it again, or you're allowed to use a certain amount, and then there's a time limit. In this game, you can use,

say, say for the first healing item, you have eight of them, and you can only use eight during this battle. Or with Angel Tears, which is your party revive item, you can only use three of them. Things like that. It makes it so you can't just go and buy 99 heal items and 99 revive items, and then win literally every fight in the game. It does make some fights very tense on expert mode. Basically, it's only the big enemies that are really scary to fight. Even the bosses so far haven't been really that bad.

Most of the bosses you can cheese in some way, like you fight this dragon and the dragon boss is so... it's really, really broken. So you get this dude who can wield hammers and axes. And he's got this spin attack. So he'll like fucking spin to win. And at the end of the attack, he does this like swipe up attack. And it knocks back the enemy. Now, when you do this on this dragon boss,

basically, it puts it every single time into its stun state. So it stuns it. You get some hits in. then the dragon flies into the air and basically shoots down like fire meteors. You just don't stand in the way. When he lands, you spin again, he stuns, flies up, does the meteors, lands, spin, stun, fly, keep doing that until he's dead. He literally cannot hurt you when you get him into that loop. It's not a good fight. That's one of the times where I felt like I should have been on normal mode, just so that fight didn't take such a ridiculously long time.

But I mentioned the kingdom. So the kingdom isn't just something that gets the kingdom. So the kingdom isn't just something that gets upgraded as you go through the story. You actually have to spend time upgrading the kingdom. So to upgrade the kingdom you get these things called King's Guilders and it's a fucking

mobile game system. You don't spend actual money you just wait real time and because of that things can't be super expensive but you build things in your kingdom and Then you will get more Kings guilders. I think right now every hour I generate 11,000 Kings guilders so when I get those I can then spend them on buildings or spend them on doing research That's the other thing you You can research upgrading better weapons being

available, better armor being available, better spells being available, better items you can search for. You can even do things like researching the ability to move faster on the world map. All of that stuff's really cool. Then you get to the second

stage, and you're like, holy shit, this got a lot more expensive. So you start with, I think, 17 buildings. And they all cost, I think, 100 or 120 king's guilders to build, or 240, something like that. Like, a really small amount. Second stage, it's like, oh, there's 45 buildings now. Uh, my computer just slept from a- Why did my computer go to sleep?

What? Why did it go to- I'm literally recording something. Why did it go to sleep? Okay, whatever. Uh, what was I saying? Kingsgilders? Um, right.

45 buildings. And they all cost like a thousand each. There's one bit you have to build, which is a square, like a town square. And it's like 24,000 King's Guilders. But it also gives you a massive increase in the amount of money you can generate. So it's probably worth it in the long run. Now, when you're recruiting people to join your city or your country, whatever you want to call it, all of these people have different skills they have so one of the first people you get this uh person that came from the

sky pirate village because yes you're also allied with the sky pirates a sky pirates are pirates that fly planes because of course they do they fight they fight the wyverns because of course they do. They fight the Wyverns because of course they do. Anyway, the daughter, which I'm forgetting the name, Tani, Tani is really good at mining. So if you put her in the mining camp and you just make her mine to the end of her life,

she just generates you more resources from that. Her father, Batu, he is a good military strategist. So you want to put him in the barracks. I think it's the barracks you want him to be in. But as you get more people, you notice that some of them have skills that don't align

with any of the buildings you have. Like there was one of them I had which her skill was tending I think it's tending the market garden or something like that. But market garden isn't a thing you have in the first rank of your your city so you have to go and upgrade it to build that and then you can put her there and Everyone is like that they have their own skills

But when you have a small number of people living in your city you sometimes want to move people around to I guess Change out the... Oh, what's the word? To use their stats in other places. So there is a stat system for research, like you might need 150 magic knowledge. I think they actually call it IQ. So the stat system is IQ for your city. So you need 150 IQ to research, let's say, level 2 magic. And sometimes if you don't have two people that specialize in a building, you can still move them over because their stats still align with what you need. But some buildings like the general store, and I think you can build a cafe.

There's definitely a general store and a restaurant you can build a what was it, a cafe? There's definitely a general store and a restaurant, not a cafe. And specific people have to work there. So you meet this cat like this actual cat boy, not like not like cat boy with cat ears, like actual this is just a cat who wants

to be a chef. And you put him in the restaurant. And you meet Geralt who, she ran the general store back at the Sky Pirate Village and now she runs the general store in your village and there's lots of things like that. Now to replace the minion system from the first game, they didn't completely eliminate like some sort of minion system. You still have minions, you just

don't recruit them in the Pokemon fashion where you fight them and they join you after a thousand tries to get it. In this case you have the Higgledy Piggledy system which is very similar. They don't directly fight for you, they are these little minions that sort of run around the field. I'll see if I can show you what they look like. Ninokuni 2. Higldi. Higldi. Uh, yeah. Higldi. Higldi. Here's a Higldi. Look at the Higgledys. They're weird and adorable. Um, and some of them are smug, but also some of them have demon horns, apparently. But basically, the way you recruit these, so there's two ways. You can either find Higgledy

stones in the world, and for a Higgledy stone, basically it gives you the little riddle. It says, hey, do you have thedle it says hey do you have the thing i want do you have the thing i need and then i'll explain some item like maybe they'll say i like the the vegetable with the the yellow things where i the vegetable with the where are only the yellow things on it so what they mean there is they want corn or they'll say I want high quality cloth or something like that. And you want to give them the item that they want. To make it easier, the game does limit the section of items that are available to items in that class. So if they want wool, it's going to show you the different variants of wool. If they want a fruit, if they want wheat, or things like that, it's going to tell you, like, the specific category that they

actually need. So, you can't just waste all your items trying to get this. The other way to generate these Higgledys is by going to your, what is it called, the Higgledy, the Higgledy Brewery you have in your city, uh, and that is being managed by a character called Auntie Martha, who you meet, like, right at the start of the game. And she's like, you know what? I'm going to join your city, because why not? It sounds fun. So she runs that, the Higgledy Brewery, or whatever it was called.

And you can brew up more Higgledys, because I guess you brew up Higgledys. And that place is also used to level up your higgledies. So you don't level them up through combat, you level them up by feeding them food. Basically, you give them a mukbang. So, let's say, there's one that likes wheat. The different tiers of wheat give different amounts

of experience. The higher tier wheat gives more experience. So you want to, like, you want to preserve those higher tier items, or maybe you want to just get rid of all your low level ones if you don't need them. Basically, it's a way to, it's a way to sync items that you don't need. But because you have those systems in the city

to generate items, it's not really that big of a deal. As long as you're going back to the city every so often to, I guess, collect the items that are being generated, you're always going to have enough to get everything you need done. Now, was there anything else I wanted to mention? I don't really know. Honestly, I could talk about this game for a while.

I played it for like 25 hours over the weekend, which is a really long time for me. Like, I'm also in the middle of watching Mr. Robot as well. So basically my weekend. While the internet is still being trash. Has been playing Ni No Kuni 2. Watching Mr. Robot. And you know what? It's been a fun time.

I've enjoyed it. I'm going to keep playing Ni No Kuni 2. I still love it. I don't know whether I like it as much as the first game, but I feel like now that it's, it's focused more on the city rather than the characters, which it was doing a really bad job at, it's taking a, it's taking a much better direction now, and we're just about to unlock the boat, so we can go over to Hydropolis, which is the city of water, if you couldn't tell by the name Hydro. But when we unlock the

boat, that means we are to go and explore some of the caves we couldn't go to before. So it opens up the world as you go. And presumably, I've noticed that something like some chests are located on mountains. I imagine, like the first game, you're eventually going to get some sort of flying system. Probably not a dragon like the first game, you're eventually going to get some sort of flying

system. Probably not a dragon like the first game, but it'll have something to let you fly around, which will be good because it means that you can travel around the world quicker. Oh, I completely forgot about one of the other main systems. It's not the war the, is it called the, it's not the war system, is it? Skirmish system, the skirmish system, so basically, oh, I also forgot, like, the, the main overarching plot of the game, yeah, we'll do that as well, so the skirmish system is a really interesting one, basically, you're a king, so you have an army, and sometimes people try to come and like overthrow your kingdom they don't actually like show up to overthrow there's like a little stand there and you they'll stand there until the like you go and say i want to fight you so when you go and select

to do a skirmish basically you have these little these little chibi troops around you let's see if i find a good picture of it. Here we go. This might work. So you're standing in the center and you have these troops standing around you. And you can sort of select where they get located. They're always going to be located around you except for certain units

which can go off in their own direction. And they have their own different specialties. So you have swords which are good against hammers. Hammers are good against spears and spears are good against swords. And I don't know what guns and arrows are good against, but I think they might be strong against everything,

but also weak against everything as well. I think that was the case, but I'm not totally sure. Or they might just be neutral. They could be either. Basically, but I'm not totally sure. Or they might just be neutral. They could be either. Basically, you just want to make sure you're matching up the units that the enemy has with the units that you have. But to make it a bit easier, actually really, really easy, you have these unit abilities. So one of the ability you have which breaks the game from one of your first units is the ability to call in a fucking airstrike. So the Sky Pir abilities you have which breaks the game from one of your first units is the ability to call in a fucking air strike. So the Sky Pirates apparently have an unlimited supply of bombs and they'll just fly over

and just destroy the entire enemy team that's standing in front of you. And if you sort of group the enemy in a small location, you can actually win a lot of skirmishes with a single strike it's not a good system but i abuse it a lot there are other abilities you have like shocking the enemies so they won't attack you for a bit or lowering their defense or raising your defense or raising your attack and things like that, but this ability is just so powerful that you don't really want to use them. But you only have a certain amount of

points you can spend. So the points you can spend are referred to as military might. So depending on the skirmish you're doing, you'll start with a different amount and you can actually pay king's guilders to have a bonus amount. If you have extra king's guilders and you want it to be really easy, that's a good way to do it. So you go into these fights, you spend your points,

but your points are also used to pay for your minions themselves, or pay for your units themselves. So when the grunts of your units die. So each unit has a captain. The captain doesn't die until all of the units are dead. While the captain is alive, you can pay military might to regenerate the minions you have in your units. And you want to do that because you don't want the captains to die. Because when the captains die, then become much much much much much harder. Basically, that's the idea of skirmishes.

I think skirmishes are a really cool mechanic and I think it does make up for the lack of some of the extra things the first game had. I think the Higgledy system along with this is a it's a good change compared to the Pokemon system I had for the first game. The first game, my problem with the system is some cases, because it wasn't really a Pokemon system, you know, where you threw something at them to catch them, you had to defeat the enemies. So when you're trying to grind out some of the rare enemies,

which were really powerful, there were cases where it might take a very long time. Like, I think I spent, like, maybe eight hours grinding out one of the endgame enemies. And I'm very happy I don't have to do that again. I'm very happy that I can just swap in party members, make sure they're geared up, and basically be good to go. Sure, you might want to spend some

time, you know, getting some money to pay for the gear or anything like that, but for the most part, it's a much more convenient system. Now, I didn't mention the whole thing about Evan's ultimate goal. This game is basically about setting up a one world government. Like, I'm not even joking. I wish I was joking. Evan's goal is to be the king of the world. He wants to be the king of the world to stop all wars, which doesn't make any sense because there is a section when you go to the city called Goldpaw, um, and you go into the library there and you read about the history of all the countries in the world. Every country's had civil wars. Like they've had wars between each other, but they've all had civil wars.

So like, yeah, you know what? If I have a one world government, that will end war. Like, what are you talking about, Evan? What the fuck are you talking about, mate? Like, did you even read the same books we did? Because I don't think you did. If you did, you probably wouldn't be saying this. So I stopped playing Final Fantasy for a week, and this basically just becomes a

Nino Cooney podcast. Basically, when I get super into something, there's going to be a lot for me to say about it. I should mention as well, this is, you probably won't be able to see it, or maybe, maybe not, maybe you can't see it. Okay. It's a level 5 game. And level 5 makes a lot of really cool JRPGs. I'll show you some of the other games they've made. Level 5. Let's see.

Level 5 company. Let's see what else we have people might recognize. Dragon Quest 8. Dragon Quest 9. The Ni no Kuni games, the Layton games, Yo-Kai Watch, and anything else fun?

Okay, mainly that. But definitely games that people have heard of and games that people have certainly had some fun with. In my case, especially Dragon Quest 9, which was, especially Dragon Quest IX, which was my first Dragon Quest game, that was Sentinels of the Starry Sky,

the game on the Nintendo DS. And honestly, I kind of want to go back and stream some Dragon Quest. When I eventually get in the new place and I have a good connection again, I'm excited. There's a lot of stuff that I want to stream. Right now, because the connection, I've literally got like a 0.7 up right now. It's not good. Right, I didn't mention that much before. Yeah, so my connections a mess right now.

So right now it takes me about an hour to upload a regular video like a 10-minute video on my main channel. That's at 1080p, I had to drop it down to 1080p otherwise, you know, it would take 4 hours to upload and that's ridiculous I'm not doing that, but the podcast because this is, what 2 hours of content it takes

it takes quite a while it takes anywhere from like 8 to 10 or 12 hours like i i i just leave it online i i leave my system online overnight and just do it like that i'm not gonna try to like make it work i uploaded a couple of days in advance and it is what it is it's a It's a fucking mess right now. And I'm sick with it. I'm sick of it. Like, if I was the one with the name on the ISP account,

I would have found a different ISP by now. The new place I'm going to is going to have a good connection. Me and my mate, we're getting a 100x40 connection, which might not sound good if you live in a country that has actual good connection. Me and my mate, we're getting a 100x40 connection, which might not sound good if you live in a country that has actual good internet, but 100x40 is the top tier for a regular house here. If you're in a place that has

direct fibre to the house, you can get a business connection. You get symmetrical 250x 250, but that's quite expensive. For a regular home user connection, you can get 250 by 100.

And you know what? 250 by 100 sounds great, but it's a little overkill. As much as I would like 250 down, I don't need it. I don't need 250 down 100 is perfectly viable honestly 50 is viable right now my download is 12 though which is also usable but not good it's enough where if I want to use it used, but I feel like I've stepped back into 2008 again, and it's just not good.

This is not good. With my upload, all I need is 6. If I have solid 6, that's fine, because 6 is what I stream at. So I'd want a bit of leeway, like maybe 8. That's all I need.

40, great. I can upload a podcast probably in like, how long did it take before? I think it took like half an hour before. So it would take like maybe, maybe 10 minutes. Like a regular video would probably be uploaded in a minute, I would say, which is kinda crazy,

and it's gonna, it's gonna be nice, it's gonna be nice to have that, that leeway there, to be able to stream things, and watch stuff, and do stuff like that at the same time, maybe even leave, like, an upload going on while I'm streaming, it's just not a problem whatsoever, especially because I'm basically gonna be the only one in the house. For the most part. My housemate is going to be. He works in the mines. So I'll basically have the house to myself. For like two weeks at a time.

Or a week at a time. Whatever his work schedule is. I don't know. I can't remember. I literally can't remember. Every so often he'll send me a message. He'll be like hey. Do you want to go hang out?

I was like you know what sure. I don't know when you're working. You're the only one that does. You can arrange shit. Like, when we're living together, that'll be different. I'll know when you're working. We can actually go do shit together. Otherwise, find some way to just tell me.

I think right now he's updating his Discord message. Discord, what are they called? Discord status? Not status. updating his Discord message. Discord... What are they called? Discord status? Not status. The little message you have under your name on Discord. Anyway, whatever it's called. He's updating that to say whether he's in town or not. Because otherwise, I'm going to have no idea.

I did convince him to play 14, though, which is not a good idea. It wasn't a good idea. I think he's ahead of me now, which is kind of crazy because I'm the one who isn't working in the mines. I'm the one who has

the free time to play 14. My problem is I get so distracted by all the side content, I barely run the story. Last time I heard from him, he was running, he was running the A Realm Reborn extremes to grind out the, uh, the mounts there. I don't know if he finished grinding out the mounts. I don't know why he started grinding them out,

because he's still in A Realm Reborn. So even if he's at like level 60, he's not going to be geared well enough to do that unsynced. Even if you have like a couple of people. Oh, if you have a group of 70s and 80s, maybe you can do it. But I would leave the unsynced Auron Reborn stuff for a little bit. At least, probably at least until I'm in Stormblood and I have Stormblood gear. Because even if he's at level 60, he wouldn't have Heavensward gear or Stormblood and I have Stormblood gear. Because even if he's at level 60, he wouldn't have Heaven's Ward gear or

Stormblood gear. I guess you'd want to wait till Shadowbringers, not Stormblood, because Stormblood is 60 onwards. Shadowbringers is 70 onwards. Yeah. So probably wait till Shadowbringers till I do that grinding out. At some point, I will eventually

farm the mounts from A Realm Reborn. At some point, I will eventually farm the mounts from Aromaborn. At some point, I'll eventually farm out the relic weapons as well. From my understanding, the Aromaborn relics are the easiest to do, but I haven't started. You know what? We're going to check right now.

FF14 ARR relic weapons. What do you need to do to grind out the relics? So, let's see. A Relic Reborn. So, you get your broken weapons. Sure. Okay.

Part 2. Purchase the Crafty Class Weapon. Then double meld. Attach two materials with two specific grade 3 materials. Okay, so it's specific materials. That's really easy. Now I need to defeat Dorm Chimera and

obtain Illumina Salt from the 8-man trial, a relic reborn, the Chimera, while as the job... Oh, you have to do a specific trial. It's level 50. Uh-huh. Oh, and it depends on which

weapon. You have to run it for each individual weapon, and it's an eight... Okay, that might be something I want to do unsynced later down the line. Interview with Pajal. Garrett and I'll send you back to Rowena.

While I'm on donor, purchase these items for Tomestones. Three Thavnarian Mists. Okay, that's also easy enough. Complete Ampador Keep. Wait, why Ampador Keep of all things? And receive the Ampador Glyph upon completing and exiting the dungeon. Fair enough. You'll finally present with your new relic weapon for the first time.

Though it's unfinished. Equip your new weapon and defeat 24 specific beastmen. Okay, that's also... That takes a couple of minutes, sure. Now need to defeat another 8-man trial. Oh god, another one. Okay. Another specific one for your weapon. Also wouldn't be that difficult, but I doubt anyone's running it.

That would be the problem. You'd want to do it unsynced, because otherwise no one's running it. Now you need to defeat Ifrit. Okay, Ifrit, people are still running. That's the 8-man Ifrit. Okay, easy enough. De's the 8-man Ifrit. Okay, easy enough. Uh, defeat 8-man... or the... the, uh...

I'd say 8-man Ifrit. No, yeah, no, Ifrit... base version of Ifrit's 4-man, isn't it? Uh, then you want to defeat the hard version of Howling Eye. Easy enough. Hard version of Primal Titan. Also very easy. And then purchase this Primal Titan, also very easy.

And then purchase this item. Okay, so the only difficult part, not difficult, difficult to find people doing it, I imagine, is part six and... Ampador you can find groups for. Part six and... Part 3. Yeah. But overall you could probably... If you have a group.

Like if you're doing this with your FC or something. You could probably get this done... Maybe in like a couple hours. I would say. Like that these ones, like people still run these today because they're part of the um, wait are these part of

the trial roulette? Also it's only eye level 52. Actually maybe you can brute force it. You might be able to brute force it solo at like level 60 I would say. Let's see what it force it solo at, like, level 60, I would say, let's see what it says for solo here, uh, it doesn't say anything, uh, is it part of any,

it's part of the trial roulette, okay, so maybe, maybe you could find it then, okay, that's good, I didn't realize it was part of trial roulette, So, I just realized that, I just went on the tangent about what, uh, what, about that. A tangent about relic weapons and, uh, didn't even explain what a relic weapon was. Uh, relic weapons are basically the,

the, the story weapon, the patch weapon. It's the weapon you get from going through the set of trials. It's one of the shiny weapons you can get. ARR relic weapons. They're not really the best weapons you can get. But they do look pretty cool in many cases.

For example. These are the... Yeah, this is the Zodiac weapons. In many cases. For example. These are the. Yeah. This is the. Zodiac weapons. So that's the. Aroma born stuff.

Do we have a picture of them? Let's. Actually no. I'll find a specific one. So ARR. Paladin. Paladin Relic. Here we go.

So. These ones here. So you get this glowy sword and this glowy shield, which looks pretty cool. And there are different forms of the Relic Weapons as well. That's a picture of the different Relic Weapons you get from the patches. But basically, as you upgrade your Relic Weapons, they look different as you go and some people stop at a specific

level just because they like the look of that specific that specific part of it but if you want to go all the way to the end you can get some pretty cool looking weapons I'm guessing this is

the Heavensward weapon some pretty cool looking weapons. Like, I'm guessing this is the... I'm guessing this is the Heavensward weapon? But it's like a flaming sword, which I think looks pretty damn cool. Heavens... Heavensward ARR... Why is that ARR? Heaven's Ward Paladin Relic. There we go. Yeah, that seems to have been the... Yeah, that's the Paladin Relic. It looks pretty cool. It does look pretty cool, though. But I took a break for 14,

so we're not going to turn this into a 14 podcast, but so far it has been a gaming podcast, hasn't it? So you know what? We're not going to turn this into a 14 podcast, but so far it has been a gaming podcast, hasn't it? So you know what? We're not going to break from that trend. Let's talk about something that Gabe Newell was doing. You've probably heard about this by now, but Gabe Newell was literally hand-delivering some Steam Decks. He was going around with a recording crew

and signing Steam Decks and He was going around with a recording crew and signing the Steam Decks and giving them to various people in the Seattle area, I want to say? Yes. Wait, no, that's someone called Seattle Rain Pigeons. What?

I'm pretty sure it was, um, I'm pretty sure it was the Seattle area. Anyway, he was going around hand delivering them and there's a video on the, I think it's the Valve channel, right? The Valve YouTube channel right now showing, uh, showing what was going on. Cause I'm sure there are some people that are going to be very confused by the fact there was a recording crew there as well like why are there cameras especially because there was one person they showed in the video where the person the steam deck was being delivered to uh wasn't there so this person was like why why why does the delivery

guy have cameras i don't who who who are you what okay, it's kind of funny the way that Gabe Newell introduces himself. He never says, I am the, I am, I am, you know, Gabe Newell of Valve. I am the CEO of Valve. He says, I'm Gabe Newell. I work at Valve. Which is a fair statement. It is true. He is Gabe Newell and he works at Valve.

But he's... He seems fairly down to... I'm trying to find a spot to put the drink. Fairly down to earth in the way that he sort of looks at his position. He doesn't look down on other people, even though he is in this position where a lot of

people worship him as a god. You can go to some of the various PC gaming places on the internet and people will say i don't like monopolies but i do want a monopoly from valve a valve monopoly would be a good thing and in many ways i don't completely disagree like as long as Gabe Newell is at the company, it seems like it's in a good direction. Maybe after Gabe Newell eventually leaves Valve, or one day passes away, maybe Steam and maybe Valve will go down a different route. But for now, I can totally get it.

I can totally get why some people say that a Monopoly from valve isn't really a bad thing. It makes sense and this is a really cool gesture Anyone who got a signed steam deck I'm sure they are very very happy to have done so and anybody who didn't reply to the email Asking if they'll go to be home. Do you have it hand-delivered? Probably is kicking themselves now because prior to all of this happening they did send out an email just to confirm that they were

going to be in the area so they could sign they sort of came up with bullshit for why they needed to be there but some people still happened to not be in the house. Now, what else do we got? I want to talk about this sketchy cable. So, you might not think the cables are very exciting, but apparently, Lioness Tech Tips somehow managed to make that possible. If I touch this cable that is connected to my monitor, let's see, is it going to turn off? And it's turned off. Every time. I can't show you right

now, I should have plugged in my webcam, but this cable I'm using is so fucking sketchy. It's from um, from a local tech store called MSY. MSY, in the past, used to provide really, really solid cables. They've always been a part of a... They've always used these cables marketed or branded as CableList. CableList is basically one of those, like, cable resellers that go and bundle whatever cables they find and packages their own thing. They don't actually make them.

They just say, this is CableList. I can literally find the exact same cables on eBay. But recently, CableList seemed to have changed either the supplier or something about the cables they're using. And their fucking HDMI and DisplayPort cables are so, so sketchy. I thought it was just one cable. Like, one dead cable, one faulty cable is one thing. But I've swapped between the HDMI to DVI, the HDMI to HDMI,

and both of them have the exact same problem. and both of them have the exact same problem. Every time I slightly bump it, the cable just disconnects. Like the signal disconnects. And it's seemingly not a problem with the monitor. It could be a problem on my GPU end, but it doesn't happen with my second monitor.

The second monitor turns on basically instantly and no matter what i do no matter how much i move the monitor it stays on i don't get it so i've got new cables on order from ebay getting me some uh some other off-brand cables no-name cables but these are no-name cables which i recognize why is it that going to ebay and buying trashy cables that should not work like they should be awful in many cases are better quality than what you can get from companies that with like are willing to put a brand on their product i don't get it like all of my usb cables i've gotten from ebay all of my hdmi cables all of my audio cables anything like that all of my USB cables I've gotten from eBay, all of my HDMI cables, all of my audio cables, anything like that, all of the knockoff trash I bought from eBay

has always been higher quality than anything that is branded and also cheaper. Like, have you ever seen a, like, HDMI cable from a company willing to put a brand on their product, whether that be Monoprice or anyone like that, it's always more expensive than the exact same cable that you can find on eBay. Because brands typically imply quality and people are willing to pay for quality. But in many cases, I don't want to throw Monoprice under the bridge.

Monoprice isn't a thing in Australia, so I have no idea if their cables are any good. But quality is not what I've been getting buying these cableless cables. So from now on, I'll still shop at MSY, because MSY is convenient to get PC hardware, and I don't expect them to be doing anything shoddy with Ryzen 3600X or anything like that. But when it comes to cables, unless I desperately need a cable right now, I'm just going to get it off eBay.

I'm just going to get it off Amazon. I'm just going to use the really sketchy listing where they barely list what the cable can do. And it still is somehow a better cable. Maybe it doesn't, you know, meet the entire spec they say. But if I buy an HDMI 2.1 cable and it's got at least the video signal for HDMI 2.1... Is 2.1 a thing? I don't know video signal for HDMI 2.1. Is 2.1 a thing? I don't know.

I just said 2.1. 2.0, we'll say. I'm pretty sure it is. Cables have... The display cable standards are a mess. Yeah, 2.1 is a thing. 2.1a. Whatever. Honestly, it's overkill for what I'm doing anyway.

Because I've got a 1080p 165Hz monitor so 2.0 I actually think 1.4 will do that no 1.4 I think limits to 144Hz at 1080p HDMI 1.4

refresh rate. 120 at 1080. Okay. 120 at 1080 then. And 2.0, I think it's 240. If I recall correctly. Yeah, 240 or 200.

Which does that's more than I need. I, I don't have a 240 hertz monitor, and I have no plans to go above 1080p anytime soon. I've had some people saying, oh, when you buy your new monitor, you should go up to 1440p, but that breaks recording, because then, if I capture something, then it's not going to scale down properly to 1080p So when people see it on a 1080p monitor, it's going to look a little bit weird. It will look fine at 720p but Yeah, also it won't look good on a 4k monitor because you're scaling up then and it's not a perfect resolution scale

so you're gonna to have, like, interpolation? No interpolation. Visual guessing of some sort. Compression artifacts. No, not compression artifacts. Scaling artifacts. Something like that. I'm going to stick with 1080p. That's my plan. So, 2.0 is good.

It's good, and my cables are good. Like, I've had... Actually, here's my plan. So 2.0 is good. Is good. And my cables are good. Like I've had... Actually, here's one thing. I have had a cable list cable from the old cable list for five years. Plugged into my TV. Almost being used every single day. Never a single problem with that cable. And it's a long cable.

That's a four meter cable or something stupid like that never a single problem this cable I buy three weeks ago issue looks horse because why not it's fucking dumb is it really dumb anyway talking about things that are dumb Elden Ring on launch day was a little bit of a mess on Linux. So, now it's working. Like, right now, you can play the game, and you can play it online. EAC

is working. It's a Steam Deck verified game, and everything is good. The only problems we have are the same problems that Windows has, where it's a horrible port and runs like ass. I can't play Elden Ring on my system, because my system barely meets the minimum specs.

But if we go to ProtonDB, scrolling down to the end of Elden Ring, we're going to notice there was a section there where the game wasn't working. Now, the reason why it wasn't working is kind of amusing. Yeah, right now it's got a gold rating. And it's going up every single day. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes up to platinum. As of Mars 28.

When I encounter an enemy, you drop frames. I'm pretty sure that happens on Windows as well. What are you running? You're running a 6600 XT. Well, you're meeting the minimum specs, but like, you're not running the game super well. Game does not

start, EAC splash screen. Ah, so the game also only works with the absolute latest version of Proton. There's no way you're using Experimental if that was breaking. Because everyone's using Experimental when it's working. I imagine they thought

they were using Experimental and it didn't. It didn't fix it. But we go right down to the start. Let's see if we can find it. We gonna be good? Here we go.

So when the game first came out, failed to work and cheat, failed to work and cheat, failed to work and cheat, failed to work and cheat. And this was weird, because the game came out and was already Steam Deck verified. So I was tweeting about this saying, is this the first case of a game that is both Steam Deck verified. So I was tweeting about this saying, is this the first case for game that is both Steam Deck verified, but also balked? And at the time, yes.

Because the build of Elden Ring was a little bit, a little bit, a little bit broken. And also the way Proton looked for EAC was also a little bit broken. So... Proton's search for EAC was case sensitive. So, because the casing was different, it couldn't find the EAC SO file. So, it thought it didn't exist. And it would just break.

That's why it didn't work. So they uploaded the patch. Got it working. And now. It seems to work exactly. Exactly how it should. You can play multiplayer. You can play single player.

You can play online. You can play offline. One of the original, uh, one of the original fixes for this game was forcing the game to play in offline mode, because it didn't, it didn't care if you had an internet connection or not. If you did, it would do EAC. If you didn't, it was like, okay, well, you don't have a connection, you can just play the game fine, which I think is good, and any game that does happen to use EAC in a single-player context, I don't think it should, but if it does, please just let the game work if it is in a offline mode. I can understand EAC being involved in single-player because of the way that

multiplayer works. People can just randomly invade your world. Effectively, the game is always operating in a semi-multiplayer state. Like you're always contacting back and forth with the server. So, if it is on in online mode, I don't think it's as big of a deal if it exists in a Elden Ring. Like in any Souls game for that matter because Souls games are they're sort of notorious for having really bad hacking problems in the multiplayer. So some way to address that I don't really consider a bad thing and in my case, I don't play

multiplayer anyway um as long as the i literally played through all of bloodborne with offline mode like in offline mode because i literally don't want to be invaded i think invading is a bad feature and you literally should have a toggle in your option that says invade or not invade i shouldn't have to go through any hoops or anything like that literally just let me say i don't have to go through any hoops or anything like that. Literally, just let me say I don't want to be invaded. I don't care about joining any clans in the game that might be hidden down some random path. I just don't want the feature. If I want to play multiplayer, I will play multiplayer. If I don't, then I don't.

Judging by- actually, I thought there might have been then I don't. Judging by... Actually, I thought there might have been specific... Not specific issues for Linux, but it seems like some people are saying that maybe. Hey, I've been playing Elden Ring on Windows and also on Fedora Linux.

I have some interesting results. First, I have a better... Oh, it might be better on... Lowest starting, amazingly fast, low time on Windows. Yeah, so it seems like in some cases, it may be running better on Linux, which seems strange to me, but hey, if it's working well, then that's good.

Pretty sure Elden Ring did not officially release for Linux. Not a surprise that it's buggy. You know it's literally Steam Deck verified, right? Like, you have no idea what you're talking about. Oh, that reminds me. I saw a comment on Apex. A tweet about Apex Legends. So, Apex Legends is now supported on Linux.

Because they finally went and finished off their EAC testing branch, their Steam Deck testing branch, and you can play the game fine on Linux now, which is really, really, really, really cool. I don't know if it's going to keep working between updates. I hope it does, but hey, it's really cool nonetheless.

But someone commented on it saying, I didn't realize that EAC doesn't work on Linux. How would the game work on Linux? Like, have you been living under a rock for like four months? EAC has been supported on Linux for a while. Like this has been big news. Right now it's got a bronze rating because previously it was balked, but I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up scrolling all the way up, all the way up to

gold or even platinum. Some people are saying there are issues with performance. There are shader cache issues, so maybe maybe it'll end up hitting like silver, but shader cache issues, so maybe it'll end up hitting like silver, but shader cache issues can be addressed through patches. And considering that they went out of their way to add in a Steam Deck testing branch, they probably are going to try to make sure it works well on Linux. Once again, I've talked about Apex before. I don't care to play Apex,

it's not a game that I am even remotely interested in, but I do like games that people like to play being available on systems they want to play them on. And people have been asking about this game for quite a while, so it is really, really cool to see. It is kind of sad to see that on the Proton homepage, they've removed the bar graphs showing which games in the like top 10, top 100, top 1000 games on Steam are supported under Proton. Now they've just completely replaced it with the verified and verified or playable and then games on ProtonDB. Which I think is a

Massive downgrade and I have no idea why they ever decided to do this Like this is a really stupid change and I want my bar graphs back or like at least some page on the site That has the bar graphs there because they were really useful I could say hey look at these are the games that work well, like, these are the top 10 games on Steam, here are the ones that work, uh, here are the ones that work well of that list, that was a really useful bit of information, and now you sort of just have to go and find out what the top 10 games are, and then go through, like, the different pages, and work it out yourself, like, it just makes it less convenient. Really for the sake of just making it less convenient. I don't really know why besides that. Maybe there was a reason why they removed it. Maybe there was some like

Steam API querying issue possibly. I guess that could be it. But besides that I don't know what it possibly could be and because we're on the topic of the Steam Deck I want to talk about a a slight issue the Steam Deck was having that issue being being stick drift stick drift because it seems like no matter what you build nowadays if it has a joystick It's going to have some level of stick drift, but in this case It wasn't a hardware issue, which is really nice And it's been patched through a firmware update so Valve calls it a dead zone calibration issue

introduced in a recent firmware update so basically It was fine before They are updated that probably It was fine before. They are updated. Probably sometime in. Like since the release. Probably sometime just prior to release.

And introduced a bug. So there is a. Video here. This is I guess a. Testing utility built into the Steam Deck. Or built into the Steam UI. And on some occasions. You might be able to see that there, you won't be able to see it now, on some occasions when you move the stick it doesn't instantly center back which

in games is a big problem even in UI is a big problem if you let go of the stick it might just keep scrolling. I've noticed that my PS4 controller, in some cases, seemed to have some level of stick drift, and it's annoying. But now they've fixed it, and I guess it snaps back into the center where it should be, which is good, and it's very good to see that problems like this are being addressed and problems like this can be addressed because there are obviously lots of hardware out

there where when the stick drift happens it's not a software issue like it's just a problem with the hardware and you either have to live with it or get it replaced or buy a new one that's that's pretty much all you can do. But one of the things that Gabe Newell said is he's really interested to see how people are going to use the Steam Deck, and what's going to happen now that it's in the hands of actual people. Because it's all well and good to say, here is the set of tests that I've run, here is the, like, here is the software that I've written, here are the games that I say are supported, but when you take a, any sort of software or hardware outside of a testing phase and give it to actual users,

they will break it. There's always going to be something that you do not pick up in testing that is going to be found day one by the users. Whether it's some sort of input issue, whether it's stick drift like we're seeing here, whether it's games showing prompts they shouldn't be showing. That was actually happening with

the early software being used by Linus Tech Tips. There were some games that were being detected as not being supported through Proton, but not giving you a reason why, but then the game just launched anyway. So

the software certainly still had teething issues, and it still has teething issues, and it probably will for quite a while. Probably at least until, like, we see a Steam Deck 2. But it's really cool to see the Steam Deck,

like, people are liking the Steam Deck. It's actually really cool to see, like, not just the fact that, oh, we can install Windows on it. Like, just liking the fact that the Steam Deck is a... It's a... It's a console that supports games. It's a, you know, it's a handheld gaming console PC thingy.

Whatever you want to call it. It does have issues regarding battery life, but we already know about those issues. I don't think there's any... Nah. I think some of the other handhelds do have better battery life, but then they sacrifice performance.

But I'm really interested to see, like, what's going to happen in the... in the long run with... with the Steam Deck, and not just the steam deck with the with this new device class we are seeing like is this going to be a device class we see going into the future are handheld gaming pcs and handheld pcs in general going to be a thing that people actually want to use because you might think handle PCs are weird but this is a problem that's been thought about literally since the idea of portable computing became a thing since the early days of laptops people have been trying to make

computers as small as possible and there are devices back from the early 2000s and 90s which are portable computers. They are garbage, and there's a reason why they didn't catch on. But nowadays, with the level of hardware we are seeing, it's kind of crazy what's available. Kinda crazy what's available. Now, I'm just looking at the SteamOS page. And it still says... It still says... Debian 8. Debian 8 Jesse.

So they still have not updated this page with the latest version of SteamOS. And I have no idea why. So, uh... Waiting for SteamOS 3 to drop. If, here's the funny thing. So, if someone right now were to go and, uh,

go and install Windows, I don't... Okay, so there is a repo. There is a repo, but they don't have a website for it, so... Okay, you can get access... Wait, no, that's an old version. That's in 2019.

What? No, that's the old SteamOS. Okay, uh... What? No, that's... Wait, that's the old one. Why are people even talking about this? Okay, there were people promoting the old version of SteamOS as if it was, like,

a modern thing. Somehow it still had updates up to 2019, though. That's actually insane. So it seems like right now. If you get rid of it. Maybe you can't. Unless it comes with a...

Wait. But I was on the downside of it. Okay yeah. So I think right now. Wait. Wait, but I was on the downside of... Okay, yeah, so... I think right now, if you uninstall SteamOS 3... So all those people that said, I'm going to uninstall Windows... I don't think you can actually reinstall SteamOS 3 yet. Unless there's let's see if we can find something

from when from when the new version when the SteamOS 3 or when the Steam Deck came out is there anyone talking about it now decks

reach customers it now. Dex rich customers... Yeah, so far it seems like we don't have it. Unless I can find it somewhere. I didn't even think of looking for this. uh yeah all I'm seeing right now is it's going to be available to everyone at some point Valve says back in November

but devices are in people's hands and you you can't reinstall SteamOS 3. Okay, that's not a good situation. More to show that Steam Deck is in a bit of an interesting state. Interesting state. The Steam Deck is an unfinished product, basically. That's one of the things that Linus from Linus Tech Tips said, and you know what? I'm starting to agree with him. How do you release a system where you can replace the

operating system, but you don't make the original operating system still- or you don't make the original operating system available. I don't understand it. I don't understand. And I don't understand how Valve hasn't made some sort of update here saying that, you know, SteamOS 3 is coming at this point. The SteamOS you're seeing right now is not SteamOS 3. Because it seems like there are people in here that are getting confused.

Why the hell were they updating it in 2019? I don't understand. Steam Machines were well dead. Well dead since that point. I have no idea why. Why they've kept it on life support for so long. Add an update

to your page, Valve. Say this is not SteamOS that you're running on the Steam Deck. So you stop confusing people. Someone from Valve is listening to this. Do it. Or someone with connections from Valve is listening to this do it or someone with connections to valve is listening to this Please get them to do it because it's really really annoying I keep trying to find I keep going back and looking for SteamOS 3 seeing if it's out and I keep getting the stupid old Debian 8 version that nobody should be running and And if you are running it, you're really

really, really asking for trouble. But speaking of segues, uh, Mr. Robot. So, yeah, there we go. Linux. Linux, Mr. Robot. It's a perfect segue. So

I watched through Mr. Robot Season 2. Now I'm watching through Mr. Robot Season 3. Holy shit. Season 2. Season 2 was fucking insane. There's going to be spoilers for Mr. Robot Season 2 and 3. So if you haven't seen them. And you're going to. I recommend you go and do so.

Before you listen to this section. So. The general overarching thing. Season 2. Is Elliot has. Completely lost his mind. To the point where he's. Perfectly happy to accept.

That reality. Isn't happening around him. So you find out at the end of that season that everything you've been seeing... So because Elliot has this discussion with the viewer and you know about things that you weren't telling Elliot, he didn't trust you at the start of season 2 so throughout most of that season you think that he's living with his mother

and you know meeting up with his mate Leon, going to the cafe, watching some basketball just trying to fit in with the world and laying low you find out all of that was bullshit because he was actually in prison for three months. And what was actually happening was he didn't want you to see what was actually going on in the world.

So he was showing you this fake vision. It's not that, you know, the basketball and Leon were fake. It's everything else. So you thought he was, you know, living in his bedroom. That wasn't what was happening. He was actually living in a cell. And the person you thought was closing his door at night and saying, see you in the morning, you thought was his mother,

but actually was just a female prison guard. And then the whole thing with going to the cafe, that was going to the prison cafeteria the basketball game, you know it was a basketball game but it was a bit more of a ruined area and we find out that Leon

also works for the dark army we actually find out that fucking everybody works for the dark army so there's this new, uh, what is her name? Mr. Robot, um, uh, what was her name?

Dom. So we find, so Dom is a new main character, antagonist, protag, whatever, whatever, it's hard to tell who's a protagonist in this series. Everyone sort of, like, there's different moral reasons for things that are happening. So we meet Dom.

Dom is a member of the FBI. She is trying to track down F Society. And we find out that her boss, who is the, I guess, direct, what is he? Special agent in charge of the New York division of the FBI. I'm looking at the wiki right now. We find out that he works for the Dark Army. So all of those things where she had really good leads, she had really good info.

He was trying to put a stop to it every time. Because every time that something happened he would contact White Rose he would contact Tyrell also Tyrell is alive because of course Tyrell is alive because why would you kill off Tyrell that doesn't make any sense so

basically he was trying to keep this whole operation going to make sure that White Rose doesn't make him show up dead at some point and man, season 2 was such a good season, like it's hard

to break down what was happening we also found out like more about the relationship between Elliot and Mr. Robot but also finding out that we don't actually know anything about it whatsoever. So it came to a point where they had a sequence of chess games, and every single time, the game ended in a stalemate.

Now, a stalemate every single time, tens of games is statistically impossible but what Mr. Robot wanted Elliot to realize is all of these actions that he is taking are actually actions being taken by Elliot Mr. Robot can't do anything without Elliot being there which turns out later to be not a hundred percent true, it's more like he was trying to bring Elliot over to his side. But it got them more on a, I guess on a more friendly level than they were before, but due to some stuff that then happens in season three, we find out that he's not a good... Actually, in Season 2 as well, we find out that it falls apart completely.

So it turns out that at some point, Mr. Robot disappears, and for whatever reason, Elliot doesn't know what's happened to him. But he realises at some point that he's losing time throughout the day. Usually that time is at night. When Elliot is sleeping. So Mr. Robot was waking up. During the night. Going doing things.

Working with Tyrell and the Dark Army. And. Elliot had no idea it was going on. Where was I going with this? Right, but at some point, I guess because Elliot is having his mental breakdowns, as he always does, the barrier between them,

it gets weaker, and the swapping ends up happening far, far quicker. This happens in Season 3 three so there's a section in season three where mr robot had a plan to blow up a uh blow up the ecorp building where they were storing all of the paper records but elliot was trying to sort of send the paper records elsewhere, but he had no idea how much the Dark Army knew about what was going on. They were fully aware of the fact that the paper records were being split up. They were happy to blow up one building, but Elliot realizes after all of this goes down,

what he did. The paper records got destroyed either way, but he realized that if he kept all of the paper records in one location, the only building that would be blown up is the one that he saved. He sort of

caused more destruction by trying to stop what was going on. He thought that F Society was more than it really was. F Society is just a small hacker group. That didn't really have that much power. The only reason they were allowed to operate. Is because the Dark Army found them to be convenient.

The Dark Army the entire time has been working with E Corp. White Rose literally works alongside Phillip. And the only things that are allowed to happen are things that White Rose allows to happen. This is about halfway through Season 3. I don't know what's going to happen for the rest of it. I have no idea what's going to happen in Season 4. But I'm really excited. rest of it. I have no idea what's going to happen in season four, but I'm really excited.

Oh, the other thing is that Angela gets sort of brought into both the Dark Army and also F Society. So, prior to the Dark Army, so prior to F Society splitting

up because the FBI is like hot on their trail, they end up actually recruiting Darlene as an informant Angela gets introduced to Trent and Mobley um you know the rest of the group and because they need to form a hack on E-Corp and she works currently at E Corp they use her to go and plant a femtosell and basically intercept all of the FBI uh mobile uh mobile phones that are yeah intercept all of the FBI mobile phones because the FBI was at that time in season 2 was operating outside, or operating out of, not outside,

out of the 26th floor, I want to say, of the E-Corp building. Or 23rd or 26th, whatever floor it was. So, they have to teach Angela how to hack. And she's not great at it, you know, because she's never used a terminal, but

she manages to get through it, plant the femtosell, do all that stuff. But we realise later on that Angela ends up having a discussion with White Rose, and gets recruited into the Dark Army, and she's the one who

is responsible for trying to blow up the New York building. Elliot eventually stops that, but she has a mental breakdown realizing what actually happened. Like, the building that she tried to blow up, firstly, she thought it was going to be evacuated. It was never evacuated because Elliot called in a bomb threat because there was no bomb. They just brought people back into the building.

Which, after about an hour of checking for a bomb threat, doesn't seem like a very thorough bomb threat when there was no bomb, they just brought people back into the building. Which, after about an hour of checking for a bomb threat, doesn't seem like a very thorough bomb threat when you have a 26-floor building. But, I... Whatever it... Sure. You'd think they'd do a bit more of a thorough search, but it is what it is.

Angela has a complete mental breakdown, realizing four I think four thousand people died because because of this plan because of her working with the dark army even though her input didn't really have any didn't really have any, I guess, control over what happened. She didn't get the building she was trying to blow up blown up, but she realized that she was a part of this plan, and she realizes what the Dark Army was really trying to do. They didn't care if people died.

All they wanted to do was get... They wanted to harm E- Corp in such a way to make sure Philip would give the, would convince the UN delegate to vote to annex the Congo. That's basically what White Rose's plan the entire time was. Basically give China the ability to annex the Congo and I don't know what his plan is from now, but... Dark Army crazy shit. There's... This series is great. If you're watching through this bit and you haven't seen... you haven't seen Mr. Robot, firstly, I've spoiled season two and three for you, but either way, I recommend

you go and watch it, because this is one of the few series that makes hacking exciting without making it bullshit. Like, if you know about Linux, you know about server administration, you

can see what Elliot's doing, and know what's being done before the, uh, before the, uh, the, like, the inner voice in Elliot's head describes it. So there's one scene where, uh, is it Elliot who did it? I think it was, was it Elliot? Was it Darlene? Someone performed a ransomware attack on E-Corp and encrypted all of their systems, but you could see that that's what was being set up. So before the the, like,

you know, before you actually got told it was ransomware, like, you could identify that's what was being done because the series actually makes sense of what it's doing. You could see it's like, oh, encrypting drives, doing this, doing that, and like, it was an actual output that made sense. But there's been some funny product placement throughout the series. So every time

you see Elliot, he has a different laptop, which makes sense for his character because, you know, when Mr. Robot takes over, it's very likely something's going to get broken. But he's had like MSI laptops. He's had Origin laptops. He's even swapped up his code editor. He used Vim and then he used Nano. I don't think he ever used Emacs. I don't think so. But all of the software being used,

all of the sites that are being visited, all of that is a real thing. You can go and look up the software that Elliot's using, look up the software that anyone else is using, and it's actual software. It may not be as easy in some ways to use as it's shown in the show, but there's never any, hey, this is like, unless it's, you know, a specific malware they've made.

Any of the software they use to intercept people or edit code or anything like that, all of that is actual, like, actual software that exists, which is a nice touch as well. It is a nice touch and a nice change from the typical movie hacker scenes you get. Not to say that I don't enjoy movie hacker scenes. Like, we all know the... Is it CSI Miami? That have the hacker scene that I love? NCIS. It was NCIS...

I don't remember which... NCIS Cyber. That one. Where you have three people... Was it three or two? It was too NCS Cyber. That one. Where you have three people. Was it three or two? It was too many people. More than one. All typing on the same keyboard. And you have things like...

They're breaking through the firewall. Like, the firewall is at 70%. Which means nothing. Literally nothing. And then at the end, like, someone just unplugs the computer. Because that's gonna that's gonna stop the uh the hackers that are on a different server but i enjoy the movie hacker scenes but i would like to see more of the actual this is something where we did our research we

know what it looks like to use a terminal and And we want to make this be, you know, realistic in some way. It might not be super realistic in the way where, you know, Elliot finds a vulnerability with the FBI servers in five minutes. Like, that's not super realistic. Or he can take down this entire this entire company because they left like they left like their telnet open or something like that but

all of the things, assuming that you know, you have a incompetent enough system administrator are all things that would be possible, it's not making shit up that literally makes no sense

and now we're on the home stretch for the podcast I have no idea why I tried to go for two hours today, it's been not a great experience for me for whatever reason my throat's been playing up since earlier this morning I did two videos already so I guess I just like brute For whatever reason, my throat's been playing up since earlier this morning.

I did two videos already, so I guess I just brute force my way through it. Just drink water, stay hydrated, and you'll somehow make your way through it. So hopefully by tomorrow, it's not going to be a problem. Not that I'm streaming right now because of my connection, but there is a video I do want to record. So this is breaking basically right now as I'm recording this. So, there's been a hack on Nvidia. You know, this great segue from Mr. Robot actually, and this-

the hacking group that did it is Basically, it's got basically as dumb of a name as our F Society So the group's name actually I'm gonna focus on the other window here So if we go over to this one, where is it? Where is it? Wait, do it. Oi. Oi mate. There we go the group is called lap sus their name is lap sus now i don't know if putting sus in your name is a way to make the government think you're a bunch of script kiddies who have no idea what they're doing. But I love the fact that their name is Lapsus. So there is one article in here listing out the demands they had.

Is it here? Okay, this is one of the demands they had. We are not sure how we will leak the data yet. Actually, here we go. We'll start from the first one. Here is the password hashes from all NVIDIA employees. Soon we leak data about the RTX GPUs and such.

Password hashes aren't that big of a deal. If you just have password hashes, like, that's... It's a password hash. Like, you can't really do much with that unless you crack the hashes or you brute force the... You brute force, I guess, your rainbow table or all the other methods to, uh, reverse engineer the hash. But, uh, data about unreleased GPUs, that might be a big deal.

Um, we're not sure how we'll leak the data yet. We think it will be in five different releases. It's very large, almost one terabyte. On another note, if NVIDIA contact us in email and pay a fee, we will ensure the data isn't leaked. We expect initial contact on or before

Friday. So, following this, now, can we find, is it in here? Encrypt Ransom. now can we find is it in here uh encrypt ransom is it in this article or is in a different one so i don't think it's in this one they claim actually i was just this article linked to it? Yes. So, this group following that then claimed that NVIDIA compromised their systems. Actually, no, this is, you know, this is, this is the same thing.

Claimed that NVIDIA compromised their systems. So, to address all the rumors about how NVIDIA hacked us, it's simple. Access to NVIDIA employee VPN requires the PC to be enrolled in MDM middle device management with this they're able to connect to a VM we use yes They successfully encrypted the data have we have a backup and it's safe from scum So they hacked Nvidia and supposedly Nvidia hacked them back Now they've changed what their demands actually are Is it here? where is it? uh

schematics, hope it removed I had an article open just before or like earlier this morning I want to find it, is this it? the hack is, that's the same one wait, did I just That's the same one.

Wait, did I just open up the same article twice? I took a brief break and I found the link. So Laplos says, After evaluating our position in NVIDIA's, we decided to add one more requirement. We request that NVIDIA commits to completely open source and distribute under a FOSS license their GPU drivers for Windows, macOS OS and Linux from now on and forever. If this request is not met, on Friday we will release the complete

silicon graphics and computer chipset files for all recent Nvidia GPUs including the RTX 1390 Ti and upcoming revisions. Of course, this includes all files with extensions such as.v,.vx,.vg, and more. I don't know what those files are, but I imagine there's some sort of internal documentation or internal maybe driver files or firmware or something like that. I don't know. So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours. Either officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets well secret. I don't know what Verilog is, I'll have to look into that one. Or not make the drivers open source, making or release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your drivers secrets

but also your most guardly traded, your most closely guarded trade secrets trade secrets secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too. You have until Friday to decide. Now, this Friday is referring to the Friday prior to this podcast coming out.

So I guess we'll see what Nvidia does by then, won't we? I'm going to be recording a video on this tomorrow and making sure this is out on... I guess it'll be out by Friday. Like Friday, Australia. I presume they're going by like American time. So that'll end up being the

following day or like later in the day, something like that. So there is, that's actually a perfect time for it. Like I could certainly hit the news, like right on it. Or I could title it something like, Nvidia hackers demand Nvidia open source drivers by today or release all data mmm hackers demand Nvidia release hackers demand Nvidia open sources drivers immediately immediately or face the consequences something like that I think could work either way there's going to be a video on this. Probably you'll see it already by the time you are watching this podcast, but I'm really interested to see what happens. I doubt Nvidia is going to open source their drivers,

but hey, if it takes a hacking group called Lapsus to do this, hey, I'll take it. Look, crime isn't good. But if the result of that crime isn't bad, hey, at the end of the day, all's well that ends, I guess. Too bad for NVIDIA, but hey. Yeah, definitely.

Also, even if, here's the thing, right? Even if they did completely open source their drivers, there's no guarantee that these hackers would listen to them. They've already broken into their systems and stolen this data, assuming that the data they say they have is actually what they have. NVIDIA has confirmed there was a hack. They haven't confirmed the data that was included in the hack, besides saying there was employee data and some proprietary files.

They haven't confirmed the existence of all of this other stuff, the source code for their drivers and things like that. I don't think it's impossible they have this data, but we'll have to see what happens now, won't we? I am interested. Now, the obvious question you might be asking, well, what about projects like Novo? Could Novo make use of the driver data and improve their drivers? Now the

answer to that question is yes, if they want to go to jail. So this is the same problem with the whole Windows XP source being leaked and how the Wine project was not allowed to make use of that source code. If the source code for a project leaks like this, you can't just use it. It's the same reason why you can't just go and use GPL code in a proprietary project. The project is licensed in such a way that you are not allowed to use it. And if you go and violate that, well, you're going to face the legal consequences and you don't really want to fuck with a company like NVIDIA, like you don't want to fuck with a company like say Microsoft Now the other thing you probably don't want to do is uh go and download the data

Yes yourself because I you don't really want to have that uh have that that mark on you anyway, uh someone just mentioned the Verilog stuff here. Here's an airnope, bogus, toothless threat. Here's why the.v,.vx, and.vh and other extensions of Verilog files is not enough. All design companies already encrypt their source code within the file itself. These will open up just fine,

but all you can see is gibberish that is totally undecipherable. We call it compiler directive trigger to offer non-blocks. In VCS, for example, we use protect your code and protect. Anything between these compiler directives will then become totally encrypted and appear as undecipherable garbage, gibberish. The only thing we keep outside of these directives are things like port declarations. This is needed for the design verification DV. Guys, when they run their verification IPs for RTLs and gate level simulation runs, DVs usually use a lot of ports and interface level monitoring so they need access to the

original names of the ports to keep things readable. A fully encrypted RTL result in fully flattened block in primary gate netlist and fully synthesized netlist making the original port names totally unrecognizable with probably only trace hints of what they were originally for the RTL to synthesize path. path. Right, but if they have access to the source code then they've already gotten past that encryption. Like, you don't need to break the encryption if you just get given the data. I don't know if what they say is real is actually real

it's going to be a matter of time to see what happens what did I tell you? fake hack this was Nvidia's intention but it doesn't want to offend invested parties by going open source

so they made a fake cyber attack to make it look like they're being strong armed Nvidia could just not go open source what are you talking about? cyber attack to make it look like they're being strong-armed. NVIDIA could just not to go open source. What are you talking about? NVIDIA will not cave to hackers. Probably not. No, they probably won't. This group's a joke. Releasing NVIDIA's source code is no problem. No company will touch it. That's true, but

it doesn't matter if no company... Oh, here's the thing. No Western company will touch true, but it doesn't matter if no company, or here's the thing, no Western company will touch it, but there are countries that don't really care about Western IP law, one of those being China, and that would be, assuming what they say is real, that would be really, really bad then. If they have everything on Nvidia, that would give someone with the knowledge and know-how and the machinery to do so, to completely remake an Nvidia card and do whatever they want with it. But even so, if the drivers do get leaked, this does give a lot of push forward to the volunteer groups who aren't making money from it, who are doing things like trying to eliminate the low hash rate restriction, making custom drivers for other use cases and things like that. and things like that. Even if no reputable company is going to do it, there are still going to be community projects that make use of that source code and do basically whatever they want with it.

I'm going to make a video of this. I'm very excited to see what happens, but I don't think it's going to make NVIDIA open source their drivers. But hey, maybe I could be wrong. So that's gonna be pretty much it for me then there are a couple of things I should have mentioned like Queensland and New South Wales are flooding right now but well

Yeah, Queensland and New South Wales are flooding. So if if you're in that situation Stay safe. Stay safe and buy a boat. Actually, buy a boat last week and then you'll be good. So anyway, that's going to be pretty much it for me. I would like to bring guests back on the podcast. And when I have a connection that allows me to actually have a functioning Discord call, I will be doing so. I was literally planning to message Ren and bring Ren onto the show,

but it would have been a mess. It wouldn't have been a good podcast. There would have been so much lag. His footage would have been so low quality that it just wouldn't have worked. So, we're not having a decent connection again. Without a doubt, that's happening. So,

yeah, that's going to be it for me. If you like the podcast, the video version is available. Actually, no. If you like the podcast, Patreon, subscribe, link down below probably. I've got my main channel. That is Brody Robinson where I do Linux videos. And you can go and see me talk about this NVIDIA hack

and maybe do a follow-up if the hack doesn't have anything released from it. And I've got my gaming channel, which is going to lie dormant for quite a bit because I can't stream on it. But I've got enough clips to keep it going at least for a month or so. So we'll see how that goes. And then this podcast is available as a video release

basically anywhere. The gaming channel? What am I saying? The audio release is available. No, release, basically anywhere. The gaming... The gaming channel? What am I saying? The audio release is available... No, I'm completely forgetting. Video release is on YouTube. Just YouTube. Because uploading to Odyssey right now with a shitty connection isn't happening. But when the

connection comes back, it will be on Odyssey as well. The audio release is available on where you find audio podcasts. I apologize for the absolute mess of an outro and how much stuttering I probably did during this episode and how many cuts there were, but it is what it is. So that's going to be it for me,

and I'm out.