Tech Over Tea - #84 Scaring Away The Gaming & Weeb Haters | Solo

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

For today's solo episode I had a wide range of topics planned out and then somehow for the first hour I talked about almost nothing besides anime and a little bit of gaming, but almost entirely weeb trash. ==========Support The Channel========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson =========Video Platforms========== 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg =========Audio Release========= 🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss 🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM 🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== 🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea ==========Social Media========== 🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9 🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow 📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/ 🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345 ==========Credits========== 🎨 Channel Art: All my art has was created by Supercozman https://twitter.com/Supercozman https://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/ DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, good evening. I'm, as always, your host, Brodie Robertson, and today, we are back for episode 84 of Tech for Tea. Today is going to be a solo episode, and I've got some topics lined up. Some of them, you know, might be old, new stuff that I've already talked about on the channel, but it's stuff I want to sort of expand upon. I want to start on something that, uh, I said I was going to do for a while and then finally got around to doing, and that was actually, uh, putting my, my gaming shorts over on, uh, on TikTok. Now, let me just tell you something. This website, do not play audio, goddammit. This website is incredibly easy and is also really, really poorly optimized for a small window like this. Lovely. That one I uploaded like, I don't know, 10 minutes ago, but every single clip I've uploaded

has gotten, okay, up until this one had gotten over 200 views. I don't understand. I literally don't understand how this platform works. Do people just, like, maybe there's, like, some generational gap here, but when I use a website, I'll go there to, like, YouTube or something. I'll go there to watch a couple of things. Like, things I specifically want to

go out of my way to watch. Maybe, like, Asmongold has uploaded a new video. Maybe, I don't know, uh, you know, someone's uploaded something I want to go and watch. Or maybe there'll be like one or two recommendations that sort of catch my eye. But I created this account.

I didn't advertise it at all, except for saying I made this account. I didn't even link it when I said I made the account. So all of the views that are on here are almost certainly like native views for the platform. There's five followers now which is already fairly fast growth relative to something like YouTube. 21 likes and all of these views. So do people just like do people just sit on this platform? Just, I don't know, do you swipe? I literally don't know how to use this website.

I upload stuff to it. I don't actually use it. Do people just sit there and like, watch something, go to the next one, next one, next one, like do this for an hour? Like that, that seems to be like the way that people use it because there's nothing else that explains why this has happened i do hear that like the recommendation on tech the recommendation algorithm on tiktok is like actually good so if you start watching a certain type of content you're going to start getting recommending uh recommended more of that content because they know that's what you're going to watch presumably that's that's what this is going to watch. Presumably that's what this is. So there's people who like watching gaming content and I guess my stuff just gets

shared with people who like that content. Like if you look at my homepage, this is just like super generic because I literally, I opened this website to go to the upload page. As you can tell, I don't actually have anything on my profile. And this is because of the way this website works. It works the same way that Instagram used to. And I'm so happy that Instagram finally fixed this because I now don't have to use their stupid app. They have the weird design methodology where you don't have the

web app or the, I guess there is a desktop version, but you don't have the web app have most your features. If you want people to actually like, you know, be able to set a profile picture, for example, or set like anything in their profile, they need to go and download the app. Now, I'm not going to do that. If I do that, it'll be to like set a profile picture and that's about it. I have no interest in using this app. The only reason I'm uploading my shorts to it is because it would be a waste of potential growth to not put my content here. Like, I don't care about the platform itself.

But if the reports are to be believed, this platform has higher watch time than YouTube does at this point. So, it really doesn't... Especially if you're making content that makes sense on tiktok it really does not make uh does not make any sense to not put your stuff there it's just a waste of a waste of your growth to not do that so i'm going to keep this experiment going for a while just seeing what it does uh i i don't expect to grow that much. But if I see, I don't care if it grows, that's the thing. What I'm doing it for is to see the platforms I actually see grow.

Like, because I'm doing the gaming shorts here, if my Twitch grows, if my YouTube grows, that is what I'm doing this for. I guess if my DLive grows, but I don't actually care about that one. I have seen some sort of a. A little bit of a bump up. But I don't know if that's related to the YouTube shorts. Or the TikTok stuff.

I think they might both have. Some level of. Some level of responsibility. For that happening. Plus there's the. I did get a bit of a growth recently because of the, um, the collab I did with CyanYen, but that, I

think, came from that specific day and not the days leading up to it. So, yeah, I'm gonna keep this experiment going, seeing how it goes. I will probably keep you guys, like, updated on what's happening. If anything exciting happens, it's, I don't expect anything exciting to happen,

but if something does, I will certainly let you guys know. Now, speaking of exciting things, I have actually been watching Star Wars Visions. I don't care about Star Wars. Okay, if you don't know what Star Wars Visions is, this is a... Here we go. Let me find... Yeah, sure. Wikipedia. Sure. Star Wars Visions is a new Disney Plus series. It was only nine episodes.

Yeah, it was nine episodes. I thought it was eight episodes. It was only nine episodes. And each of the episodes was animated by a Japanese animation studio. So you had like Production IG, Kinema Citrus. You had Trigger. Trigger was a big one. I think Trigger did two episodes, actually. And a few others that are

like really, really big names. Studio Colorado, Kamikaze Dogga, Science Saru, and Geno Studio. So, I don't care about Star Wars.

I genuinely don't. I haven't seen the movies. But, I wanted to watch this because what I do care about Star Wars, what I do care about from the Star Wars universe is lightsabers. Because lightsabers are pretty cool.

And basically, like, half the episodes are just like really well animated lightsaber battles they're trying to set up a um so each of the episodes is a like a separated story so they have to sort of set up their entire like all of the story related to like what's going on in that episode so you wouldn't be watching this for like an in-depth story or anything like that and i feel like the first episode did this really well because there was basically no dialogue it's just like a dude shows up at a village uh people are here to like take their resources dude at the village fights the people. Okay, cool. That's as much

story as you're basically gonna get. Some of the episodes do go a bit deeper than that and do, like, have cameos from, like, well-established, like, Star Wars characters. Like, there's, um, the second episode has Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt, but most of the episodes are original characters or just you don't give a shit about the characters. You just watch it because it's really well animated. And that's what it does really well. Like, I can't say this is like, you know, some amazing, amazing piece of media.

But if you just want to see how these animation studios would approach something in the Star Wars universe, I think it's certainly worth looking into. The other thing that's really cool about it is, while some of them do try to go with the normal sort of Star Wars aesthetic, like Episode 5, The Ninth Jedi, that is fairly, like, if you just put it into, like, the, you know, a Clone Wars series or something like that it wouldn't seem out of place other ones like the duel

by Kamikaze Doga, that is the first episode try to lean very very heavily into the the eastern aesthetic so it's not like so the dude who basically says nothing in the episode

isn't like your normal Jedi or Sith. He's, I guess he's more of a wandering samurai, and that's sort of the aesthetic they are going for, which doesn't fit into the universe of Star Wars at all, at least from anything that I know about it. But I think it is a really really cool way to approach the approach the idea of you know lightsaber battles and all that sort of stuff because it gives you a much

much sort of different style of fighting like you can start bringing like you know Katana sort of techniques and it's really cool. That's what I'll say. It is really cool It's not just like, you know, this is just animation, Japanese animation studios making Star Wars stuff. I think it's, it's not the best story-wise at all, but pretty animation, if that, if that's good enough for you, you know, it's fine to watch. That, that's what I'll say which for me in some cases i think is fine like i watched the um shit what was it called the not the current boku no hero movie the previous one uh boku no hero movie movie i'm pretty sure it's movie two heroes rising yes heroes rising where they basically retconned every single established plot point in the entire series.

They completely destroyed the lore and made that movie. It's sort of like one of the Dragon Ball movies, like how you have, you know, Broly, the Broly movie is acceptable. But then, like, you get Bio Broly and you're like what's happening what actually is happening right now and it's sort of like that with all of the Dragon Ball movies and I don't mean the new one the newest

I guess it's not new at this point it's three years old the newest Broly movie is very good I mean like the original Broly movie is very good. I mean, like, the original Broly stuff, where they were just doing whatever they wanted. Just whatever they wanted, and it was just absolute nonsense.

I don't even remember all of the movies that existed for Broly. I know there was three of them. Let's see. Can we see a movie list? Dragon Ball Broly movies. Let's see. I cannot find a list. Anyway, if you've seen the movies,

you know what I'm talking about. Or like you have, you know have the Frost movie, which is Frieza's brother, who was never established in the series at all. I'm pretty sure it's Frieza's brother, but like never established in the series at all. Things like that. That's what this is. If you approach

these movies like that, you'll be happy. Except they're actually good, unlike Bio Broly. Since I'm on the topic of anime anyway, and I've already kicked everyone out of the show who doesn't care about watching this, let's talk about Wonder Egg.

So, Wonder Egg. Jeez, where do I start with Wonder Egg Egg I just finished it the other day I've been meaning to watch it for a quite a while um okay so Wonder Egg priority let's see what the description of it is on my anime list following oh god this is a good start. Following the suicide of her best and only friend, Kouto Nagise, Ai Oto is left grappling with her new reality with nothing left to live for. She follows the instructions of a mysterious entity

and gets roped into purchasing an egg, or specifically, a wonder egg. Upon breaking the egg in a world that materializes during her sleep, Ai is tasked with saving people from the adversities that come their way. In doing so, she believes that she has moved one step closer to saving her best friend.

With this dangerous yet tempting opportunity in the palm of her hands, Ai enters a place where she must recognize the relationship between other people's demons and her own. So, actually that's a pretty good sum up of the first nine episodes. So, the first nine episodes, basically, you know, she gets this egg, throws it to the ground,

she fights some, like, inner demon for some other person. Basically, the thing that comes out of the egg is some other person who committed suicide. For various reasons, some people, like, there was out of the egg is some other person who committed suicide. For various reasons. Like, there was one of the girls who did it because she didn't want to, like, grow old and lose her beauty. Other people literally just joined a cult. And there was a bunch of stuff like that. There was some idol fans who wanted to, like, kill themselves.

And then also kill, like like the idol they were a big fan of like fairly dark stuff and through that the main character i sort of like learns about i guess how to how to feel about what happened to her best friend and the the whole goal of using these eggs is at the end of it uh she and all of the people she meets along the way basically believe that the best friend or whoever they are breaking the eggs for is going to be brought back to life that's sort of why she's doing it so to sort of cope with what happened and also bring her best friend back. And over the course of the series, she meets a couple other people

who are also trying to do the same thing. She meets Zadika, Momoe, and Neiru. Now, they have like this really adorable friendship and that's great. They don't like each other at the start, but they realize that as they get to know each other, they all have their own sort of problems and They they they start to become really really close friends now. This is while the series is good

then Then episode I think nine or ten happens now. This is where it's like hey You know how we've established all of this stuff throughout the series so far? Let's just forget about that. And now let's completely shift the focus. So at this point, some of the girls start having their friends or acquaintances or whatever they were. I think in Neidu's case, it was her sister brought back to life. So all of this starts happening, and then the antagonist gets introduced. So, the antagonist is someone known as Frill.

Now, if you haven't seen Wonder Egg, this is going to get very spoilery. very spoilery. So Frill is an AI that was created by Ura and Ura Aka, who are the, uh, sorry, Aka and Ura Aka, sorry, their names are stupid, who are the people that are selling them the eggs. So Frill was this AI

created by them, and Frill was basically treated as their daughter, but at some point, Frill became too intelligent or something, then for some reason uh killed the wife of one of the people who made her then she gets locked in the basement uh just just left there for like 10 years over that time time, the kid that was born of the wife that was murdered,

she gets in... I think by the time she's 15 or something, she starts for some reason acting like Frill did. And then all of a sudden, she just dies as well. She's like, yeah, she just kills herself and uh i think i don't remember who it was it's aka or aka they they i think it's aka aka was the

one yeah stupid names don't don't name your characters with basically the exact same name so aka realizes wait frill isn't human so So, like, she's probably, you know, still alive locked in the basement. Goes down to the basement, I guess, for the first time in 15 years. And the reason I say it's for the first time in 15 years is because somehow Friel managed to get all of these computers

and all of these, like, power adapters and all of this stuff set up without anybody noticing. Like, how do you not go into your basement for 15 years? Anyway, gets all this stuff set up without anybody noticing like how do you not go into your basement for 15 years anyway gets all this stuff set up and frill's just like hi why'd you lock me down here how's it going and she's like okay sure uh ends up frill ends up getting out of that, making her own AI children named Hyphen, Dot, and Dash, which are great names. Now, this is where it gets even stupider.

So, Hyphen, Dot, Dash, and Frill are able to enter these, like, these egg dreams that the, uh, the main characters are having, and for some reason, they are vastly stronger than the main characters, and just murder the, uh, the, the pets they had with them, who were, like, helping them fight off of the, uh, fight off the creatures who were trying to kill the egg thing. So just murders them. They get really depressed. Except for Odeka who gets really angry and decides she wants to go and... I think she... I don't know.

I think it was Hyphen who attacked her. Decides she wants to get revenge for her pet that was killed. Doesn't get it. Because she's significantly weaker. Then out of nowhere, literally out of nowhere, it's just like, Neidu decides to just piss off. She just leaves. And it turns out that she actually wasn't human either.

She was also an AI. And I'm just like, what is happening right now? How do you manage to introduce all of these plot points in your last three episodes and think this is a good idea? If it stopped at episode nine, amazing series. Absolutely amazing.

It went from being like a nine or a ten to being like a five in an episode and a half. I don't know how it managed to do it. I guess I've heard they were like rushed towards the end of the production. So that's probably what ended up doing it. But you would have thought then that when they had like the extra special episode, they would have wrapped up the plot points. Didn't wrap it up,

actually introduced more plot points, and then set it up for a second season. So, during the whole, like, frill nonsense, they introduced a concept known as the Warriors of Thanatos and the Warriors of Eidos. And this is never touched upon at all past this point so I is like I am going to become a warrior of Eros and nothing is done of that it just goes about the rest of her life we never even find out what

the warriors of Thanatos and the warriors of Eros actually are it's just an extra plot point that's never expanded upon. And then it's over. And I don't think it's ever going to get a second season. Also, the other problem with the special is you look at it and you think it's going to be like 46 minutes long. Half of it's actually a recap

for the entire series. So, in fact, you only actually get an extra one episode, which was not enough time when you spent half the time expanding other plot points. And actually, not expanding other plot points. That'd be good. Adding other plot points.

So, I'm going to say, if you want to watch Wonder Egg, do it. It's an interesting show, but don't expect the ending of it to be good. Go into it thinking this has really good potential to be a

good series. This is really exciting. The fight scenes are beautifully animated. Absolutely amazing fight scenes. And then it just shits the bed nine episodes in. And just watch the train wreck as it unfolds i think sometimes just knowing something is bad and going into it like that honestly makes it more fun than going to something that is like kind of average i would much rather watch something

that is a train wreck level of bad than watch something that is like, you know, generic Isekai 10,000. Like there's so many generic Isekai that are coming out next season. I'm going to watch some of them because I like generic Isekai. But my point still stands. Like anything with like Isekai in its title. I always assume if you put Isekai in your title, you're probably not going to be, like, the best thing out there.

Here we go. Here's one random series that I don't know if it's going to be good or not, but it's a Silver Link series. It might be good. Sekai Saikyo no Ansatsu Sha Isekai Kizoku ni Tensei Suru. Like, you know, with a title like that, you don't really go into it expecting much. But you sort of expect it to be like, you know, okay.

Wonder Egg, it's not okay. I don't, like, I don't know how it's ranked 725. I think that a lot of these rankings are from while it was airing. Because while it was airing, as I said, up until episode 9, very good. And then... Then... Yeah. Then yeah, basically.

Oh my god. What a series that is. I'm happy I watched it. But, um... Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm happy I watched it. So now that that's done, I'm starting on the...

What's the name of it? The PDP Love Live anime. Is it Nijigasaki... What is it? Nijigasaki? What is it? Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. Because I am a big Love Live fan. I just never got around to watching this. I know the new season of Love Live is airing right now.

I will probably get to it at some point. Honestly, Love Live has never, it has never managed to surpass the, uh, the, the original series, that's the problem that Love Live sort of has right now, like, it started off so well with Muse, and then, and then everything else happened, and you're like, okay, well, uh, can we just have Muse back? That'll be nice. Obviously, that's not going to happen, because they sort of, like, finished off their story. So, if it had stopped there, I wouldn't have had a problem. The thing is, I still like Love Live. Like, for all its flaws, I still like the series, and I still think my trashy idol series is fun.

If it goes down the route of basically just being like, uh, what's the word? Aikatsu? You know, I won't complain. I like Aikatsu, even though it's shit. It's pure shit. But it's fun, and that's what matters. Like, I watch Pretty Cure. Like, my taste in anime is garbage. So, like, don't expect me to be like,

yes, I only consume the pinnacle of anime, like Steins Gate and Serial Experiments Lane. I actually haven't seen Lane. I should do that at some point. Like, I... People keep telling me to watch Lane. Like lane's so good but uh i've never gotten around to it probably is good it probably is but i just haven't watched it especially because i have like a lot of people from like you know from g in So, like, it's sort of expected that that's, like,

what people are asking me to watch. And maybe I'll finally do another anime review if I eventually get around to watching Lain. Don't hold me to it. I probably won't. But if anything is going to, um, anything is going to make me, make me make another anime review, it's probably going to be that, just to, just to take the piss out of what I used to do, and appease the G people in my audience. It's actually an adaptation, huh, of a,

oh no, it's, sorry, it's got an adaptation, oh, okay. Sorry, it's God and Adaptation. Oh, okay. Wait. What came first? Okay, no. It's God and Adaptation as a manga, I guess. Okay, that's fair. So it was an original... Yeah, it was an original and then God adapted it to a manga. Right. Okay, makes sense. Hmm.

Came out the same year I was born, though. That's... Huh. Actually, what else came out in 1998? Let's see if there's anything... Anything noteworthy in 1998. I don't expect that. Nope. Oh, Trigon and Bebop continued.

Okay. Cardcaptor continued. Initiative D continued. Okay, so there was nothing that started in that season in summer 1998 that was good but we have some good continuing series yo original Yu-Gi-Oh okay maybe this was a good time to watch anime then maybe it was it certainly wasn't full of isekai trash like we see now which to some might be a good thing to me mmm I don't know speaking of things that

might be a good thing fortnight NFTs fortnight NFTs so I guess for some reason people have been this is happening to every project right now I just I've been watching um stuff about the new world trainwreck and people have been bugging the new world devs about adding NFTs into their game and epic CEO has bad news if you're hoping to see fortnite NFTs we aren't touching NFTs says Tim Sweeney and I guess people saw this thing and they were like, that must be an NFT. Like, I don't understand. Like, people see a bright, shiny object and like,

NFT? NFT? Is that an NFT? They're like, they're all fucking like seagulls. They like see anything remotely resembling NFTs. And they're like, where is it? Give me the NFT! Give me the NFT! Calm the fuck down. So on Monday, Tim Sweeney tweeted that Epic isn't touching NFTs in a public response to what was presumably an NFT pitch. Presumably many of them.

I cannot imagine he just got one of them. He cites the space's problem with scams as the reason for his hesitancy, which sparked some discussion in the comments, as strong savers at crypto tend to do. Sweeney has since clarified his views on NFTs a little, saying that to him, owning an NFT is about as valuable as liking an image on Twitter and calling into question whether NFT ownership is actually non-fungible. That's, yes, yes, Tim Sweeney.

We are actually in full agreement here. While I don't agree with Tim Sweeney on everything, when it comes to NFTs, you know, I can't argue with that position. So, while Sweeney's public publicly made position is... Wait, while Sweeney's publicly made...

While Sweeney's publicly made his position clear. What the... Verge, can you grammar check your articles? it's not likely to stop him from getting a wave of NFT pitches which you can see for yourself by searching at Tim Sweeney Epic NFT we will do that it's understandable why people try though

Fortnite has made billions through the sale of virtual objects and there's been a lot of discussion around using NFTs in video games. Not that Epic and Sweeney were small fries before Fortnite took off. No, Epic has already been big for a very long time. So... Here we go.

Hi, Tim Sweeney Epic. Sir, please... Sir. I love it when anyone says sir as a way to get your attention. Sir, please check your inbox. love it when anyone says sir as like a way to get your attention. Sir, please check your inbox. Twitter one. Hope to TTY. Replied.

We aren't touching NFTs as the whole field is currently tangled with intractable mix of scams. Interesting decentralized tech foundation and scams. Now, I want to show you the tweet itself, because some of the replies to this are actually kind of golden. Yeah, there's nothing else in this article worth looking at. So, oh, wait, is this the... No, that's a different one. Wait.

Is that the... No, so this is the one I wanted to talk about. Is this the one? Uh... Okay, maybe... Oh, I guess it all started from this tweet. It's really just software licensing of IP assets on a blockchain so that licensees of certain IP assets can prove and transfer ownership

peer-to-peer. Could use to sell in-game assets without dependence on third-party payment processes. A problem I am guessing Epic is familiar with. Are you trying to trying to pitch them based on the Apple problem? Yeah, no, this is the one. Thank you, Tim. This means a lot of Epic won't touch NFTs. Actual environment. Yes. And here we go. Here's someone who is certainly not biased. Who certainly doesn't own NFTs.

Absolutely. Oh, here we go. Hey, Tim. Big Unreal and Epic fan here. In fact, Unreal Tournament was one of my first FPS. Let me tell you one thing. You're going to miss the Web 3 train hard and you'll regret it one day. Allowing Web 3 and NFT capabilities into UE5 would be a revolution.

Hope you will realize... Of course he realizes, but Epic makes a lot of money selling new Fortnite skins every now and then. He doesn't want to give power to the players by allowing them to resell those skins as NFTs. Why would he allow you to resell skins? Like, why would the game allow you to do that? Because there's not a limit. Like, from what I understand, like, Fortnite skins aren't a limited asset. Like, you could, they're just, They're just minted as people buy them.

There might be limited edition ones, but wouldn't most of them not be? So reselling them doesn't make any sense. The problem is, as you get older, you tend to lose touch. And those who don't adopt the utility of NFTs will get left behind. Sorry, Tim Sweeney Epic, but this is a big mistake for Epic Games. Do you... Yep, don't have a bias at all. Base Tim, exactly, Base Tim.

Understandable. Giving users any more ownership of in-game assets takes power away from you. We just sort of build it ourselves. Ownership of in-game assets as if NFTs are worth anything at all. As if having an NFT means that you own anything. I'm going to have more NFTs. Last time I

talked about NFTs, the NFT guys got really on my case. So I'm very excited for that to happen again. Here we go. What other fun stuff do we have here? Give me some... Yep. Tim based as hell.

Very true. Wait, guess... Wait, what? Guess Tim and his team haven't found a way to steal NFTs and make it look like they created them as they've done with Fortnite and their new game clone of Among Us. What did...

What did Fortnite clone? Sure. Okay. Yes, Timbit. Are they scared? I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. This is why I never got on the internet at all. Let's actually... I know there were other tweets in here

that are worth looking at. If we go back a little bit. Here we go. So he was... Oh no, we actually read that one already. Let's see all the replies. Okay, those are replies the same one

so um yeah Mr. Mr. Epic of Tim Sweeney Mr. Tim Sweeney of Epic is uh

not touching NFTs which is probably a good thing because the problem you're gonna start seeing with uh

with Fortnite NFTs is you're gonna start seeing people massively uh massively inflating the price for something that is effectively worthless. And I don't think Tim really wants that, wants that really hovering over Epic, especially because, okay, the big, one of the big problems that NFTs and Fortnite have, just actually NFTs in general, but NFTs and Fortnite have, just actually NFTs in general,

but NFTs and specifically a game targeted towards kids like Fortnite has, is you're going to start seeing a lot of kids taking their parents' credit card, buying something they shouldn't be like they are already doing, and sort of making this problem worse. And NFTs already have this like really, what's the word? Really bad reputation as it stands. And encouraging that inside of a kid's game,

I don't think is going to be the sort of image that Tim Sweeney wants to see for his company. I can totally get not wanting to be involved with this. And to be completely honest, I wouldn't be involved with it either. Like, sure. You can say I have my biases against NFTs. That's very true. Absolutely.

Fair enough. But the NFT collectors also have their biases in favor of it. So this is basically just people arguing in favor of their biases. I don't think there's any value in NFTs being added to Fortnite. I think it would just put this weird this weird

target on Epic and Fortnite that puts them into this weird scammy category that NFTs sort of have got themselves into. Because, like it or not, that's the reputation that NFTs sort of have got themselves into. Because, like it or not, that's the reputation that NFTs have at this point. Sure,

there might be, you know, stupid art projects you can buy. Maybe they're good art projects, but a lot of them are, you know, I made pixel art in five minutes. Or I paid someone on Fiverr to make pixel art. That's the vast majority of what you see and besides that you see you know stolen images and all of this sort of stuff that

doesn't give nfts the reputation that nft collectors think they have it's the same problem with the um it is the same problem with this general crypto. Sure, there are crypto projects that are not scams, but the reputation that the space has as a whole right now is as a melting pot of scams. And getting involved with that just doesn't make any sense. Here's the other problem with it. If there was any issue with the NFTs, like say, for some reason,

an NFT that was supposed to only be minted 10 times or something, got minted 15, that already starts putting into question the validity of what they are doing and makes it seem like they're doing something scammy, even if what it actually was, was just a bug. This is the right call in my mind. Sure, it's not going to make them the most money.

And actually, that's another argument there. Anyone who's saying that Epic is doing this for the money, doesn't understand the words that are coming out of their mouth. This is the opposite of that. If they wanted to do this for the money, this stupid bull here, they would sell as an NFT and sell it for a shitload of money. And they could just

keep doing that. They're not doing this not because they're going to make more money by not doing this. They're doing this because it's just not a good market to be in right now it's really not

and I expect lots of comments from the NFT guys being like you don't understand NFTs oh the NFTs are the future there's gonna be the future of ownership your house is gonna be an NFT one day if that's what you think, that's cool, but at the end of the day, I, uh, I have no interest in getting involved,

and that's, that's basically where I sit, and that was a bug that had landed on my microphone. Oh, lordy lord. Anyway, um, since we're on the topic of video games, Anyway, since we're on the topic of video games, guess what game is now available on Steam? A game that, you know, a beloved game that everyone wanted to be available on Steam and was going to be so much fun that everyone wanted to play. Minecraft Dungeons. I have seen gameplay of Minecraft Dungeons. I have seen gameplay of Minecraft Dun- So Minecraft Dun- That was very loud.

Minecraft Dungeons, if you don't know, is basically... It is a, uh... What's the word for it? Is it... Whatever genre Diablo and Path of Exile are. Is it ARPGs? ARPG sounds right. It's like...

Like, if you've played Diablo, you know what Minecraft Dungeons is. So it's that style of game. And I don't know if it's improved since I've seen gameplay of it before, but when I last saw gameplay of it, it, uh... It... It didn't look like, uh...

There's flying now, that's cool. It didn't look like a There's flying now. That's cool. It didn't look like a good game. But... But... Hey. Maybe. Maybe it is. How much does it cost?

It is $30 in Australia. Oh, that's not that bad. I wouldn't pay full price for it. Oh, okay. There's a bunch of DLC now. Okay. So when I last saw it, it was back when the game had first come out. So I guess

there's way more content now. And maybe it's a better game. Maybe. It looks pretty. They got the aesthetic down really well. I'll give them that. I don't have any care to play it. But hey, if you want to play it, apparently

it works really well under Steam. So, really well under Proton. So, what that means is when you buy a Steam Deck, you can play Minecraft Dungeons. If you want to, for some reason. I'm biased, but the name

Minecraft in the title makes me not want to play this game. I'm biased, but the name Dungeons in the title makes me not want to play this game. I'm biased, but the name Dungeons in the TARDIS makes me not want to play that game. Yeah, there's definitely more Diablo than Minecraft. It's basically a... It's an ARPG with a Minecraft skin. That's what it is. The base game is just Minecraft Dungeons by itself.

Oh, okay. So if you buy the base game, you actually won't get the DLC. So you actually do get the really boring experience that That oh wait no, so wait what? Which is the DLC the ultimate DLC pack gives you the game? No. Okay, so it's actually $60 to get the both the game and then... Yeah, okay. So, right, there's a pack here.

Buy Minecraft Dungeons Ultimate Edition, which is not the Ultimate DLC Bundle. So that gives you the game and also the DLC. Look, I'll give it that it'll look pretty. Absolutely. I cannot argue that it does not look pretty and and it, uh, does not get the aesthetic down really well, it's got that, like, uh, it's got that machinima look to it, you know, like the, the, like, the Captain Sparkle's music video sort of, sort of style to it, don't think it's a bad thing, will I play it? Not at $30, but if it goes on sale for the Christmas sale, maybe?

For the memes? Like, okay. Here's the question. Would I play it for $30 with the DLC? Maybe. Maybe I'll just, look, if the game was $15 in Australia, maybe I would buy it and then stream it a couple of times just for the memes.

And you know what? It could be a fun game. It certainly could be. I have not seen any gameplay to indicate that, but it certainly could be. It could be one of those games that isn't fun to watch but is actually fun to play. So that's a thing you can play.

Apparently you do need Proton GE to play it. It doesn't work properly. With the official version. Yeah you can't use the official version. It's missing all the movies you end up. Okay. Wait some test videos? What are these test videos?

Oh. The cut scenes don't play. And you see this. Wait, some test videos? What are these test videos? Oh! The cutscenes don't play and you see this. Beautiful! That's better than Ender Lilies gets. Ender Lilies, you just skip the cutscene. Actually, I'll show you the gameplay. Why not? Turn this music off. Can we see...

Can you show me some combat? Show me the combat. Combat. Okay, here's some combat. Like, it looks okay. It looks like... There's not many inputs. It kind of looks like, you know,

baby's first ARPG. Which, to be honest, is a good way to get people into the genre. If you play this, and then you go and play, like, Path of Exile or Diablo, you know, I don't think that's... That makes it ultimately bad.

I think that's... At the end of the day, if that's what ends up happening, that's probably a good thing, more, more plays for those games is always good, I, I don't play many of them, but every time I play a game like that, I always find it fun, I probably should go back and play something like Path of, uh, Path of Exile again, it has been a very long time since I last played that game, I know it works under... Under Proton as well. I think it might have a silver rating? That... I think.

Path of Exile. Let's see. Let's see what it says on ProtonDB. No, it has a gold rating. Ooh! Just change DirectX to Vulcan and you're good. Okay, easy enough. Not officially supported, but works very well.

Vulcan... Yeah, everyone's just saying Vulcan. Vulcan works perfectly. Switch to Vulcan. Vulcan... Less stutter... Okay, yeah, cool. I can very well play it if I want to.

It's just... A game like that would take a lot of time. And... I don't know whether I want to pick up a game... If I pick up a game that's going to take me a very long time, it's... It's probably... Look, if I pick up a

game that's going to be with me for years, it's probably going to be FFXIV right now. That's what it's looking like. So, I haven't started playing it yet, but it's on my radar. I keep talking about it. It hasn't happened yet, but I can assure you that it will happen. It's just a matter of time. Speaking of things that did happen, though,

I just finished Ys VIII a couple of days ago. Now, I initially got told about this game back when we did, I think it wasn't the... was it the first episode we did with Hex or was the second one? Might have been the second one. This is a really really really good game I don't know okay I don't know where to start with this because

there is there's a lot to talk about so I think we can start with the combat system the combat system is sort of the main focus. So the Ys series originally has been either an isometric game or various other sort of fixed point cameras. And then in Ys VIII, they decided to go with, you know,

the normal sort of third-party camera you see in a lot of action RPGs nowadays. Now, that's not a bad thing. Like, I'm perfectly happy with this camera angle. The problem is, I feel like after 50 hours of this game, the combat system is still sort of designed around that fixed-point camera. So, this game has a guard and a dodging system. And you get bonuses when you do dodges and guards. I believe if you dodge, time slows down

and you can use your abilities quicker. And then if you guard, all of your attacks are going to be criticals for like, I don't know, I think it's like five or so seconds. And it's the same with dodging as well. It's like five or so seconds. So it gives you the ability to do way more damage by actually dodging things and blocking things within a reasonable time. The problem is that reasonable time is a very, very tiny window. And the hitboxes aren't accurate.

That is the biggest problem with it. So, if you play something like, say, Dark Souls, Dark Souls is a game where the hitboxes being accurate, or at least accurate enough,

is very important. So, if, say, you're fighting a Black Knight and they swing the sword down, the point where you want to parry that is just before it hits you. Perfectly fine. It's not going to, you know, somehow hit you even though you've parried it. You want to parry it just before it hits you. Now in IS-8, because of the change in camera angle, and I guess they're not really used to having this movable camera, some of the attacks, I don't know if this is actually the case, some of the attacks feel like they hit you before it looks like they hit you. So there are these dinosaurs that have this

spin attack, and they will hit you with their tail. Now you'd think that the point where you get damaged is you know when the tail hits you but it's more like at some point along the spin. So dodging that or blocking that is very very difficult because it's really not clear where the damaging point of the animation actually is. Some enemies are better like when you fight a boss that has a really obvious tail or they'll have like a big sword and they'll be like ha and then they swing at you like that that's that's fine you can

block that dodge that fine but when I play through the entirety of Dark Souls, I feel like by the end of the game, I can parry or dodge anything in the game. Like, that game sort of encourages you to do that, and you get better at it as the game goes on. But even after 50 hours of IS-8, I still don't feel comfortable going into any encounter and then dodging or blocking everything. I got better at it as the game went on, but that's sort of more accounting for the game being jank than me just getting better. So that's one of the problems with the combat. The other problem is it has the other- I'm gonna be care- Because it- look, it has a dodge and a guard system, so I'm gonna just compare it to Dark Souls.

The other problem it has is the same problem that Dark Souls 2 has. Where very early in the game. You effectively get infinite healing items. Now Dark Souls has one healing. Dark Souls 2 has two healing items. It's technically humanity. But we're not going to count humanity. We're just going to count the Estus.

And the stupid gem things. Wait, no, sorry. There actually are more than two because you can get a better version of the gems. But, you know, he can get those, like, what are they called? Dark Souls to healing items. What are they called? Life gem. Yes, life gem.

So early in the game, you can get very, very many life gem. Yes, life gem. So early in the game you can get very very many life gems. You can get like 99 very early in the game. And IS-8 has the exact same problem. I don't know if this is the same with the other IS games but you every time you go out into the field there will be like trees and stuff

and from those trees you'll get berries, coconuts, mangoes, things like that. It's very easy to get a lot of them. That's one problem. But then you also get potions which you can also fill up when you go back to your hub town, your hub

village. You get food that you can make and that gives you bonuses. And the best food in the game is the food item that also gives you health recovery and has a very short cooldown so you can make and that gives you bonuses. And the best food in the game is the food item that also gives you health recovery and has a very short cooldown so you can just sort of spam eating that if you need to. I think

you can get like nine of those. It's very easy to get a lot of healing items plus getting a lot of revival items. So this game has a party system and when a party member gets down

you can revive them or you can revive the character you're playing and then go back to using them. So you also get basically infinite of those because those are basically just when it comes to the fruit that you get off the trees, you either get a regular version

or a ripe version. And for some reason, a ripe coconut will also revive you. I've never seen this happen before in medical science, but I guess eating a ripe coconut or a ripe mango will also bring you back to life. But sure. Fine. Whatever. You also get revival

potions and other things. It's the exact same problem. But one problem the combat has, I don't know if this is the case on higher difficulties, but on low difficulties, I was playing on normal because I didn't think this game was going to be so easy. I played 50 hours

and didn't party wipe a single time. So, when you're not playing a character, when there's just a party member running around doing stuff, the AI, for the most part, actually fairly good. They can be a little bit jank sometimes when there's an enemy on a ledge above.

So there were a couple of cases where you're in an area where there's a bridge above you and there's a walking area under that, but they're still technically in the same zone. Sometimes the... Oh, I've got a package coming today. Sometimes the AI will just stand under where the enemy is and just swing their swords.

But when they can see enemies, they don't get stuck on anything. If there's a log in the way, they'll jump the log. I've never seen them completely break like that. The problem they have, though, is they can't die. So... This... the problem they have though is they can't die. So, this, if you're not playing a character, no matter what happens to that, that character,

they will only go down to one HP. So they can get, um, they can have the burn status effects. What that's going to do is lower your health constantly because you're on fire. And if you're playing that character, that will keep going until you die. Not if you're...

Not if the burned character is just in your party. They'll just sit there on fire, not taking damage at all. If they're on one health, they get hit by something, they don't take any damage. I know why it's like this, is to stop your party just constantly wiping. But it really... I know why it's like this is to stop your party just constantly wiping but

it really It really takes away any difficulty from the combat Because if you're very worried what you could do is just hit something get your party members to attack it and Then run around it and just not get hit And let your party members deal with everything. Because even though they don't take any damage. I think. I'm pretty sure that the damage they do. Is still.

If not the same. It's only a little bit lower. And they can kill things just fine. They can kill bosses. Everything like that. So. It just. It makes every fight basically trivial. Now, as I said, I was playing on normal mode,

so maybe this isn't a problem on the higher difficulties. And when I play Ys IX, or I go back and play, like, Memories of Celceta, or something like that, I will be playing on a higher difficulty. But, I don't know, it sort of took away from the experience

that I had with that game. When it comes to the story, I don't really have any complaints to make. Up until maybe like the 40 or 30 hour mark, it's a pretty, pretty normal, actually not even, I was gonna say normal JRPG. It's actually more akin to like a normal RPG.

Like there's nothing crazy going on. You, you're in a shipwreck and all of the people in the shipwreck basically are stuck on this deserted island and come together to build up a castaway village. Then the 30-40

hour mark comes around and there's time travel and gods and you literally end the game by fighting the origin of life and all of this stupid shit. One of your party members becomes a god. The story is, it becomes JRPG stuff. I don't really have

anything really bad to say about that. It's perfectly salvageable. It's good. It's a good story. I like JRPG nonsense, so if you like JRPG nonsense as well, it's good nonsense. One problem I do have with the story isn't the

story itself it's the storytelling so one problem a lot of games have is they will tell you stuff rather than showing you stuff they'll say something like oh there was a big horde of enemies and the party fought them off whereas what a a you game is going to do is going to get you to fight off the horde of enemies. And it does this a lot. It'll be like, oh yes, this person went to go and speak to this person, or

this fight happened, and it doesn't let you do that. A lot of the time it does. But a lot of the other times it goes down like the visual novel route, just telling you stuff's happening. I feel like some of the problems that happened here

are more due to time constraints. And maybe it's due to the new animation style they went with as well. I hope Ys IX is better in this respect. So, there were some situations where

like, this was dumb. A party member would go and like hug another party member or go hug someone in the village, and they didn't actually hug them. It was like this person hugged them, and they'd just both be standing there like this. Like, you know you have

animation, right? Like, you can move their arms. It's the same problem a lot of MMOs have in that respect where they don't bother animating stuff. I can forgive some of this stuff because the combat for all its flaws is really fun and the story for all its JRPG-ness is really fun as well. But it's a great game

but I cannot call it my I cannot call it my favorite JRPG. While it's good that still has to go to... That still has to go to Ni No Kuni, Wrath of the White Witch. That easily takes that...

That mantle. If I had to put something before that, I'd probably put, like, Dragon Quest IX. Sentinels of the Starry Sky? Starry Night? What's it called? It's been a long time since I played it. Dragon Quest 9. Sentinels of the Starry Skies. Yeah, that one. But I do recommend playing the game. I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it. Right now, it is $70 in Australia.

I think that would put it around like the $45, $50 mark in the US. You'll get your money's worth out of it, but I would say wait till it goes on sale and then buy it a bit cheaper. but I would say wait till it goes on sale and then buy it a bit cheaper. On that note, I did actually go and buy every single one of the old IS games. So the other day there was a sale on all of the early games. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to play them anyway. So, seven games for $60?

Why the fuck not? I bought them. They're now in my library. Ys IX isn't in my library, because Ys IX wasn't in the sale. It was a sale on XSEED Games, which was the publisher.

But in Ys VIII, the publisher changed from XSEED to Nihon Publishing? One second. Ys VIII. Or was that... Ys VIII. Let me see

the goddamn game. Not all of the DLC for it. Oh, no. It's NIS America. I was thinking of the publisher, Nihon Falcom. So, yeah. The publisher changed from XSEED to NIS America.

So, Ys VIII and Ys IX weren't in the sale. But Ys IX will go on sale for Christmas anyway. And I'll buy it then. And I'll probably have fun with it. Because I hear it's basically... It's basically IS-9. It's basically IS-8. But they've improved on just various things.

And the combat... The combat looks way flashier. Oh, yeah. Here's another problem I had with IS-8. So, IS-8 has a fucking obsession with invisible walls. Like, look at this combat. This is beautiful combat in IS-9. IS-8 has an obsession with invisible walls.

So, you would go up a ledge. There would be, you know, a little barrier, like, up to your knees. Now, in this game, you can jump like two meters in the air. But you can't jump over the barrier. So the only time you can jump off the ledge is when there is no barrier,

or when there is a barrier that is intentionally made that you can jump over. The reason why it's like this is because the movement system. Is completely busted. So. There are. There's a way to fly.

With Dana. You can just character swap. And you just start flying. With the main cast. You can character swap. By doing two attacks between Adil and Sahad.

So you do two attacks with Adil, two attacks with Sahad and you just keep swapping back and forth and you just fly up. You can also jump and then dodge roll and just get infinite movement in the air like that. So there's all these problems the movement system has,

and rather than actually addressing them, they basically just said, fuck it, you can't jump over ledges. Ys IX completely changes that. So Ys IX has... I haven't played it yet, but it has this wall running mechanic, and I think there's a grapple hook or something, and movement is a bit more of a focus in this game,

which I think is honestly a really, really big improvement. That was one of the big problems I had with exploring the world. Like, I would see something that's like on the other ledge, it'd be the chest on another ledge, and I know that if there wasn't an invisible wall there, I could just jump to it. But no, you have to go around this stupid puzzle and work your way up there

for no reason besides the fact that they wanted to put a wall there. That's the only reason why. Also, I want to complain about the final secret boss. So, I did all of the bosses in the game. I took out the uh the final secret boss so i did all of the uh i did all of the bosses in the game

i took out the the final boss the true final boss and then the uh the secret boss at the end of the um the the what was it called like the the former trials of something or rather um basically it's a dungeon that dana has to go through and then at the end of the game you The former trials of something or other. Basically, it's a dungeon that Dana has to go through. And then at the end of the game, you can go through that as the rest of the party. You're supposed to go through that when you're at max level. But because levels don't matter in this game on normal mode, or really on any mode if you can just have infinite healing items I went through 20 levels under I fought the final boss that boss was at level 99 I was at level 80 and it

wasn't very difficult and I was like okay what is the reward for this gonna be because when Donna got to the end of this section there was like some extra plot stuff we find out who plot stuff. We find out who EO was, we find out all about the Eternians and all of this stuff. When Adol finishes this section, what happens is you get

three items. You get an item to you get an item to add piercing, slashing, and crushing. No, those are not the correct names. Those are the RuneScape names. Basically, you can add the three standard damage effects to your party members.

So every single party member has a type of damage they do. So Adil and Dana use slashing. Nikota and Sahad use crushing or whatever it's called. And then Lakshya and Humil use stabbing. It's called tactics. That's what it's called. But I'm going to keep with the RuneScape names. And you get items to add that extra damage to them.

So you can go and mix up your party. However you want. Without worrying about. You get into an encounter. And you don't have any of the crushing damage. In your party for example. So that's great and all. But the game's over. The content's over. So like.

You get these things. And the game's done. So like like, you get these things, and the game's done. So, like, it's not very useful. Now, you can go into New Game Plus, but New Game Plus, it's no extra content. It's just like, hey, you get to run through the game again, but everything is leveled up. That's it. So, I didn't bother. I was like, you know what? I've already played 50 hours of this RPG. I'm not going to do that. The only reason to go into New Game Plus is if you miss some of the achievements. Like you missed a quest or something like that.

Because there's no way to go back and do quests that you missed. Yeah, pretty much it. I'm done with Isate now. It's a good game. I'm happy I much it. I'm done with IS-8 now. It's a good game. I'm happy I played it, but... There were problems I had that I hope are addressed in IS-9. Apparently, Adel is also a better character in IS-9 as well. So, Adel is the main character that goes through the entire series.

I guess, from what I hear, his personality changes a bit and the way he acts is a little bit different and he's just a better character in 9. I don't think he was a bad character in 8, honestly. But if he's better in 9, that would actually be... That would be somewhat of an improvement, I guess. Like, I don't know how he could be better, but I'll take it.

I'll take it nonetheless. Actually, on that note on IS-8, I found out there's actually a mobile version of IS-8. Not like... Not an actual mobile version where they just took the full JRPG and put it onto mobile. No, what it actually is, is like...

A custom mobile version. It's really strange. So, like, they completely changed the art style. Also, Adol now just talks. Normally, Adol doesn't talk. He only talks in, like... When you tell him to say something. Like, it's not a bad... It doesn't look

bad at all. In fact, it actually looks fairly good. Especially for a mobile title. Now, I think it's just lagging because my browser for some reason is lagging, but... Oh, and also quick time events. We skip ahead a bit. Um...

No, that's... Let me see the combat. Here we go. Combat. Oh, sorry. It was a different bit of combat. I had quick time events. A very simplified combat system, though,

which is fine. It's mobile. So, like, whatever. Does have the music, though, which is fine, it's mobile. So like, whatever. Does have the music though, which is always good. There was another one I wanted to show you that I just saw. I noticed that Lakshya had a different outfit. I don't

know why. Wait, okay, this is actually different. Yeah, it's a different part of the game. Why is everyone running so quickly. Why is everyone running so quickly? Why is everyone running so quickly? What the hell? I don't have this sped up, do I? Oh, look at this! Oh, yep, I knew it was a... I knew what this was. So, it's the IS-8 world, but it's a Gacha!

Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be a Gacha? So, they seem to have added extra characters that weren't in the game. They weren't in the game initially. And, I, it's gonna be Gacha, isn't it? I guarantee, I guarantee it is, because

it's a mobile game. It's a mobile game. Of course, why wouldn't it it? I guarantee it is, because it's a mobile game. It's a mobile game. Of course, why wouldn't it be? I do like the outfit Luxa has, though. That's actually a really cool outfit. I wish that was what she had in the main game. But she does run really quickly, which is very strange.

Anyway, that's enough talking about Ys for now. I think Ys VIII is a very good game, and you should play it. And if the old games go on sale again, I guess play those as well. What else do we do? Actually, I've not talked about really anything

on my list. I somehow managed to spend the first hour talking about anime and JRPGs, which, you know what? Isn't a bad thing. So I actually have some new stuff in my audio chain now. Hopefully I can move this without

it ruining the audio quality. This is a Cloudlifter. So a Cloudlifter is basically a... It's a little preamp basically so it takes my microphone boosts it up with an extra 25 decibels of gain and then I can send that into my mixer and don't have to have as much gain on the mixer now the reason why I uh I did this like you can get away with not having a Cloudlifter.

Like, the advantage of the Cloudlifter with a Shure SM7B is that I have to completely max out the gain on this thing to get any reasonable sound from my Shure. The Cloudlifter basically takes some of that work and then moves it out of the mixer board, which gives me a lot more wiggle room for what I want to do so without having the Cloudlifter

I had to max out everything and if I needed to push some extra sound, I just couldn't it just couldn't be done at least without destroying the audio quality, which, if I'm buying a Shure, I, I really don't want to be doing. Now, I haven't got this

perfectly configured yet. I have noticed that for, uh, for some things, it is still kind of peaking a bit, so I might be able to lower the gain down a little bit and sort of get a bit of a better audio quality like that. But I think it's at the point now where it's good enough that I'm happy with the sound. So previously, I was actually having my input level at this point here which it's going to sound louder but it may also introduce extra i guess extra sort of what's the word um distortion into the um into the audio chain so offloading that i think was the best choice now the cloud lifter while you know while it's expensive, I think they're like $300 in Australia

or something like that. Like with the Shure, I'm never going to replace it. Like, you don't get a better Cloudlifter. I guess maybe in 20 years, there'll be something with a cleaner signal, but the signal is already so clean anyway that it doesn't really matter.

And the Cloudlifter, the Shor, as I said, there's just no reason to replace it. So even though they're expensive purchases, they're expensive purchases that I make once and then never have to make again. One problem I do have

with the Cloudlifter is it was bundled with cables, which is a good thing. So now I have some spare XLR cables, but the cables it was bundled with were a little long. So the listing didn't tell me how long they were, but they are 15 feet cables. Now, but they are 15 feet cables. Now, I've shown my audio setup before, but I've got my Cloudlifter literally placed right behind my mixer board. So I have a 15 foot cable with about 14 feet sitting on the ground. I've got a much shorter cable on order, not because it's a big deal for cable management, like It's all just

tucked away. But having these extra long cables doesn't do anything good for the audio quality. Getting rid of any extra length is a good thing when you're dealing with any signals like this. It removes any chance of

signal degradation that you would see from running massive cables. Like, I could get away with a 100 feet cable, but there's nothing that I'm trying to do that would benefit from that. And all it would do is really just potentially lower the quality. A good cable probably won't lower the audio quality, but it's a risk that there's no point introducing into my chain. Plus, if it does help up, like, help up clean up, um, help out cleaning up, like, the mess of cables I have, that's, that's a good thing. So, I've got myself a three-foot cable now, which was the shortest one I could find that was, you know, a reasonable price, because I could find shorter,

I found a, um, a little cable like this, $25, I'm like, no, that's not happening, the, uh, the, the three-foot cable was $8, why was the tiny cable so expensive? I don't know, might have been, like, the specific brand, and not many people making cables that short or something like that I don't know the exact reason why but I was not going to pay that so now we have what we have

and I feel like there's not really much to much to do in the way of in the way of upgrades I already had a green screen from ages ago much to do in the way of in the way of upgrades. I already had a green screen from ages ago but I don't have a green screen stand so when I get into my new place I'll buy that and then we can do some green screen fun.

I don't know what we're going to do but I think there's going to be some fun with that. I opened it up yesterday just to see how big the green screen was because I didn't actually remember just to see how big the green screen was I didn't actually remember it's quite big it's like 2 metres high

it's like 2 metres high and I think like this wide or something stupid like that which is good because it's going to let me like you know cover up my entire entire background but it was a pain in the ass to get back in the box. So,

at some point, I'll be using that, and that'll be fun. I probably won't use it for the podcast, but it might be fun for live streams and stuff like that. And then I can do the green screen thing where you pop yourself over the stream itself, rather than just having yourself in a little window.

Mmm. Ah. over the stream itself, rather than just having yourself in a little window. You know one thing I haven't talked about at this point, even though we are about an hour 20 into this, I've still not talked about, um, I've still not talked about the Steam Deck. So this is going to be old news at this point. I already made a video about it, but both EAC and BattleEye are now supported under Linux. Now, I personally don't care about EAC or BattleEye. I don't play multiplayer games with the exception of I'm going to play Final Fantasy, but Final Fantasy doesn't have, if it does have anti-cheat, it doesn't have anti-cheat that is a problem on Linux at least. So I don't play games like Fall Guys, BDO, Hunt, Paladins, maybe Halo Master Chief Collection, but the single player already worked completely fine. I don't play games like PUBG, Destiny 2, Rainbow Six Siege, anything like that.

But a lot of people do. These games are very popular games. And... Now, EAC and BattleEye are both supported, not just natively on Linux, because BattleEye already was supported natively.

They're now supported running through Proton, so running the Windows binary on Linux, which is the more important thing because I don't expect Rainbow Six Siege or any games like that to get a Linux binary. The problem that we see now, though, is that it's enabled, but it's an opt-in feature. So that requires the devs to actually go and enable it. Now, as you probably know from anything about game developers, that's a challenge because it's going to have to be tested and QA'd and publishers going to sign off on 10 levels of red tape just to get anything done. So I don't expect the change to happen anytime soon.

But I mentioned this in my video. Valve has a lot of money. And if any company is going to be in a position to get you know all of these all of these game developers to actually all of the big ones to actually swap over and not just swap over like enable the feature It's going to be valve like valve

Valve is invested in making Linux gaming good. The reason they launched the Steam Machines, because they wanted to distance themselves, or not distance themselves, avoid themselves from being locked into Windows. The reason why they launched Proton is because the Steam Machines failed, and they needed some way to get developers to actually make games that would work on Linux. So, instead of making to actually make games that would work on linux so

instead of making devs make games that work on linux how about we just make devs make window games and we just we just make them work on linux valve is invested in this and i think valve if they can't get the companies to do it just because more sales is good, they can definitely get them to do it with a bit of a paycheck. Basically, every big game at this point that was using anti-cheat has forum posts being like, Yo, hi devs, fix this, enable the anti-cheat on linux because it's going to be in the uh the latest version of the sdk for battle.i and uh eac so all they like all they would need to do is update to the latest version of the sdk which they're going to do anyway because if you don't update to the

latest version it's not going to address like the latest versions of, you know, cheating in your game. And then when they do that, they'll have to... enable the feature. That's basically it. Now some people are saying, oh, but like testing and all that stuff, like yeah, that's fair. But they weren't releasing the game on Linux anyway, so if it doesn't work on Linux when you enable the feature, nothing's really being lost for them, I guess. Yeah. I hope it happens. I really do, but I'm not holding out hope for devs to just suddenly start doing this. I think they're going to need some extra push, like the Steam Deck coming out and actually selling well, or something along those lines. And when it does happen, hey, you can play Apex on Linux if you want to, for some reason. I don't know why you want to play Apex. But if you want to. The option is going to be there. There's still going to be other anti-cheat systems.

Like Vanguard and things like that. That need to be addressed. But Battle.io and EAC cover basically all of the major games. Vanguard is basically only used in Riot games. For things like Valorant. Does League use Vanguard? What anti-cheat does League use? I would assume Vanguard because it is a Riot game. League of Legends anti-cheat.

I presume it's using... I presume it's using... Vanguard? I'm not seeing any specific information about what they were using. Ah, here we go. Yeah, no, it is using go. Yeah no it is using. Wait no it isn't. I keep seeing things saying.

Like League of Legends anti-cheat. League of Legends anti-cheat. League of Legends has a new anti-cheat. But. No one's actually. No one's actually saying. What system it is. I have to presume it's Vanguard because Riot is the one developing it but I'm not seeing any specific

confirmation of that if someone happens to know then please let me know speaking of things that are segway something root certs are dying speaking of things that are segue something root certs are dying so let's encrypt is a very popular system for doing

SSL encryption and the root certificate that they were previously using is about to die so any devices that have not been updated you know in the past that they were previously using is about to die. So any devices that have not been updated, you know, in the past, like, you know, three, four, five years,

might basically break. Now, this is sort of, like, a very... What's the word? Exaggerated title. Like, this isn't going to break, like, new devices. What this is going to be doing is breaking older devices that are no longer being updated. So, let's see if we can find the sort of things. So, things like macOS 2016, Windows XP with Service Pack...

Yeah, Windows XP with Service Pack 3. They're likely to solve some issues. Old versions of Android. Unless you're running Firefox. Because Firefox manages its own list of certificates. If you're using older versions of the PlayStation 3 and PS4 without their firmware updated. A lot of these devices probably are going to start breaking. a lot of these devices probably are going to start breaking.

It's likely going to be the case if you have older smart devices as well that were no longer being updated. Maybe older like Kindles and things like that. But honestly, this is kind of funny. This is the problem that you start seeing with devices that are... Devices that are no longer receiving these updates. While you obviously have to stop supporting a device at some point, a lot of these devices are still perfectly working. When it says older smartphones,

it means smartphones running Android 7. Which, Android 7 is old. It's very old, absolutely. What devices were running Android 7 which Android 7 is old, it's very old, absolutely like what devices were running Android 7 Android 7 um Android 7 devices, what was

Moto G4 Moto G5 uh what did Samsung do at the time I don't care about that one what year was this this was back in

2019 was the last release of 7 like this is still fairly recent. Sure, if you're running a, um... If you're running something that actually got up to, like, got the latest version of 7, it would have had its root certificates updated and it's not actually going to be a problem. Absolutely. That's entirely true. But if you're running one of those devices that didn't, like there's so many devices out there that that they were released, got a couple of security patches, and then not much else happened. If you're a device like that, it's It's in a situation where that might break. It does mention embedded systems here,

but unless we're talking about embedded, unless we're talking about smart devices, I wouldn't really consider this to be an issue because most embedded systems probably are not going to be internet connected anyway. And if they are, they would be connected over a local network.

But, sure, you can laugh at Windows XP or Mac OS 2016, but a smartphone that's like 5 years old? Sure. I've run something newer than that. This is like 3 years old. You can laugh at that, but there's a lot of people

I know that are still using iPhone 5s and iPhone 6s. Smartphones have done everything that a regular person needs with a smartphone for a very long time. The only reason to buy a new smartphone at this point is because

you broke your old one or... Yeah, you broke your old one. That. Yeah you broke your old one. That's pretty much it. Or you have I guess a phone plan. Like you have one of these predatory phone plans. That forces you to upgrade every single year. Even though your phone is perfectly working.

Never get a phone plan like that. Please just get a prepaid phone. It's much better for you. Save you a lot of money. You won't be buying a $1,000 phone every single year. It brings your bill way down. So I don't know what the aftermath of this is going to be. I don't know.

But by the time this goes up, the aftermath is going to be seen because as of the recording of this, the certificate dies on the 30th of September, which is going to be tomorrow. So if there is anything exciting that happens, if this is like, you know, an actual Y2K moment, I'll probably do a video on it because that would be kind of funny.

I hope that nothing bad happens. And if you do have an older phone, you, you know, you have some way to deal with this. But if it is going to be bad, well, it's going to be funny. And that's what's going to be funny to me. Speaking of things that are kind of funny, I want to talk about something I saw on PC Gamer. Something on PC Gamer that kind of... It kind of hurts me as a computer enthusiast,

but I kind of understand... I kind of understand how it happens. So, students don't know what files and folders are, professors say. A whole generation has grown up with powerful search functions and don't think about computers the same way. This is obviously a stock photo. For anyone who's too dumb to understand what a stock photo is, I shouldn't need to say that, but there is a comment in the comment section of someone not understanding what a stock photo is.

I'll show you that in a minute. So university students in courses from engineering to physics are having to be taught what files and folders are the Verge reports, because that's not how they've grown up using computers. Whenever they need a file, they just search for it. I tend to think an item lives in a particular folder, it lives in one place and I have to go to that folder to find it. Astrophysicist Catherine Garland said, they see it like one bucket and everything's in the bucket. Strangely, it may seem to older generations of computer users who grew up maintaining an elaborate collection of nested subfolders. Older generations like my generation.

This is talking about people in college right now. So there are people like, maybe I just lived in a bubble because I did go to university for computer science. So you'd expect people in computer science to know about computers. Maybe in other courses

like, maybe that's just not the case. Anyway, strange as it may seem to older computer users who grew up making elaborate subfolders, thanks to powerful search functions now being the default in operating systems, unless you're on Windows 10 where the search is not great. If you're on macOS, Finder is actually really good. It's been very good for a very long time. As well as the way phones and tablets

obfuscate their file structure and cloud storage. Actually, this is a really good point. So, while you can access your file system on your Android phone, most of the like, most of the generic file managers, like the file managers that come with it.

I'll see if I can find mine, actually. I don't use the standard one, because I actually like to see where my shit's stored. Is that the default one? Yeah, here we go. Like, if you open up the Android file manager, this is what you're probably going to see.

It focuses on it. It's not going to see it focuses on it it's not going to yeah there you go it shows you a bunch of categories of what things are it doesn't say hey here is where it's located it's like okay this is this is video this is audio this is an apk things like that so i can totally see that being the case and especially with cloud storage if you can just dump shit into like google drive icloud dropbox anything like that i can see that being an issue uh students have had these computers in my lab they'll have thousands of files on the desktop completely unorganized i know people like that uh peter plevchan an associate professor of physics and astronomy at george m, told The Verge.

I'm kind of an obsessive organizer, but they have no problem having thousands of files in the same directory. And I think that is fundamentally because of a shift in how we access files. Now, can I just say that anyone who has thousands of files on their desktop is a bit of a degenerate. Like, I'm a big fan of having a wallpaper. I use a window manager because I don't like having desktop icons. You can say that not having desktop icons is just a waste of space, and I just shouldn't have a wallpaper, but I like it. So, I like booting up my system and seeing my dumb wallpaper, and that's how I'm going to keep it. So, I like booting up my system and seeing my dumb wallpaper, and that's how I'm going to keep it.

My family always gives me a hard time when they see my computer screen, and it has like 50,000 icons. It says, Aubrey Vogel, a journalism major at Texas A&M. Oh, of course. Yep. As The Verge points out, the first internet search changes were around in the 1990s, but features like Windows Search... No, Windows Search is not a good search. And Spotlight on MacOS are both products of the early 2000s. While many today's professors grew up without search functions on their phones and computers,

today's students increasingly don't remember a world without them. They had search functions. They just, you know, weren't something like, they were just an icon on your screen. It would be, hey, download a third-party app, or if you're on a Unix-based system, you would be able to use something like the find command, and that would allow you to do that. This isn't necessarily a bad thing or a reason to recoil in horror because how dare the user today do things differently why the very idea no that's actually that is something you should do organize your damn folders like organize your folders so you don't have to use your search you can just click on something uh when i was a student i'm sure there was professors that said oh my god

i don't understand that person who doesn't know how to solder a chip on a motherboard. If you're in an engineering degree, I hope you know how to do that. And Garland, the astrophysicist teaching an engineering course, has started using

her PC search function to find files in the same way as students do. I'm like, huh, I don't even need these subfolders. No, you do. Put your shit in stupid folders. Okay, here's the same idea, right? Let's say that you had a big wall of things organized into folders. Now, you could put shit into just random folders there and be like, okay, this is fine. I can just search for stuff.

But sometimes you don't know exactly what you're looking for is actually called in which case you probably want to have stuff sorted like this is this is the big reason for having some sort of reasonable folder structure so when you don't know what something is you know where it may be like i don't i don't think this is just a gen um this is just a generational thing. I think this is more... Computers are a very easy thing to use at this point. There's a lot of people who basically just... Basically will just boot up the system

and then just not really think about much. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that having some sort of... Some sort of... Some sort of... You know, structure is going to save you time when you forget about stuff. So I'm already old school.

It's a lot sooner than I expected. Yeah, someone in... You're probably in your, like, late 20s, early 30s. Just know your picture. I'm Gen Z myself, 14 years old. You're also reading PC Gamer. Always took pride in how organized a PC was.

Yeah, that's fair. Tech-friendly isn't the same as tech-savvy. That is something I try to get across on my channel. on my channel. Our own folders, directors, and file names are just mnemonics to help us remember what and where we put things we're trying to find. Learning how to search efficiently and accurately is the key, but the right search terms

are using Boolean logic quotes, colons, hyphens, asterisks. You can locate pretty much anything you're looking for. Actually, this is a good point. It requires actually renaming stuff so you can find stuff sensibly. If you go and copy an image from your phone, it's

going to have a name like image51jpg. I believe it's highly misleading. Let's see. see weird I thought the Minecraft generation that learned how to set up servers when they were still in elementary school would be ahead of us no they paid someone to do it where is that comment from the person who was saying this is fake maybe they deleted it maybe they deleted it because they realized it was dumb.

Another thing the next generation won't have a clue about is using Microsoft Office. I already see it at work where new hires have no clue how to do basic stuff, office. I already see it at work where new hires have no clue how to do basic stuff, basic things in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Nobody knows how to do that unless you work in an office. That's not a generational thing. That's just a thing that

nobody cares about. I find Windows Search utterly hopeless. That's because it is. Where is that comment? I have a feeling they might have deleted it. Either that or this post took off so much. That. It's just.

It's just been completely buried. But I think the problem a lot of people in these comment sections are having anyway, is they're looking at it from the perspective of someone who reads PC Gamer. Like, if you read PC Gamer, you are already a tier above the regular people who use a computer. Not to say, like like you're some like some elitist person or anything like that. It's just that if you're reading an outlet like PC Gamer, you already have a somewhat of an interest in computing. It may not be like a an absolute deep interest. You might not be like super tech savvy or anything like that, but you at least have

an interest in what your computer is. If you go find people outside of that space, most people don't give a shit about what their computer is running. What they care about is, is the computer fast enough to do what I want it to do? And if it's not fast enough, that means I need a new computer. It doesn't mean I need a new operating system, doesn't mean I can switch to Linux and get more performance out of it, doesn't mean I can like upgrade my GPU. It means my computer is bad, I need a new one. And that's the perspective of That is the perspective of people who would be doing this they just use their computer as the magical box that lets them connect to the internet but in fact a lot of people don't

use computer like if you can get away without using a computer a lot of people are going to do that if you can just do everything on your phone, I guarantee in like a generation or so, that's going to be the way that it ends up being done. There's always going to be like these hardcore techie people who want to run Linux and want to have their desktop and all of this sort of stuff. But the general consumer, I think is very much shifting away from that point.

And I don't think there's any way to really bring that back or really any, any reason for it to be brought back, really. Like, if you can get everything you want done without really caring what your computer is doing, why should you really care? That's pretty much, that's pretty much where it is. that's pretty much where it is now keep in mind that if you're watching this podcast, you are not in the category of people who would probably

be doing this, you're probably in the category of people who actually do care about their folder structure and do care about their computer and do care about all of this stuff but find someone in like a journalism degree or in an arts degree or in even a science degree. A lot of those people aren't going to really care.

Science, you probably should. Because if you're going into any sort of lab work, you do need to understand something about how your computer works. Something about how your computer works. But not to the same extent. That it would have been. When you would have to like. Set up stuff on something like DOS. So.

Yeah that's pretty much it for that. Speaking of things. That I didn't know about. Or people don't know about. Or something like that. I don't know. So the Stream Deck. The Stream Deck is a little. a little elgato device there's basically like a macro pad uh not steam deck stream deck uh because valve cannot name this

yet they use the name that's already in use so the stream deck with an r little macro pad with screens on the keys and they use for streaming, usually. Now, I thought for the longest time that there was no way to use this on Linux. There was no, like, there was no drivers for it. There was no way to configure it, anything like that. And if I bought one, it would just basically be a brick. Now, I had been looking at this about a year ago. I somehow managed to miss a very obvious project.

So there is a project known as Stream Deck UI and it doesn't let you do everything that the official software does. So it is going to have limitations. The official software hooks into

Twitch and YouTube and stuff like that. But the nice thing about Linux is you can go and, you know, you can run, okay, so it lets you run commands and there's going to be commands to do a lot of the stuff that you're going to do natively in the stream deck anyway, like doing audio modifications, doing audio modifications, starting a stream on Twitch, starting a stream with OBS, things like this. Stream Deck UI, it seems like it does everything that I personally would want it to do. Plus, it's in the AUR,

so getting it set up is actually really, really easy. I might have to buy a stream deck. I want to buy one. I've been wanting to for a while. I know that I can set up a macro pad normally with my computer. That's fine. And that's the way I'm doing it right now.

Man. The stream deck's a cool device. It is a really cool device. And the problem, though, is this. This is the other issue I had. It's not the only Stream Deck software. There's actually two of them. There's actually a second set of Stream Deck...

I guess you'd call them drivers or configurers or something like that. Let's see if we can find this one. I think it's called... Was it DeckCast or something? DeckMaster. DeckMaster. And this does basically the same stuff. This one, rather than being configured through a GUI interface,

is going to be configured through a CLI interface is going to be configured through a CLI interface, but it does everything you need it to do. Personally, I prefer the other GUI look. But this is nice as well. I would try, if I buy a stream deck, I'm gonna try them both out. So that lets you control the stream deck. And the other thing I was looking for a while back is a way to control OBS from the CLI. Because if I was to buy a stream deck, I would want to do things like swapping scenes and things like that. And because this, I found out, doesn't have integration with OBS, I would need some way to actually do that. Luckily, that

also exists. So, there is a project known as OBS CLI. And this isn't just like, you know, kind of nothing stuff in OBS. This is, you can start streaming, stop streaming, you can start recording, stop recording, you can swap scenes,

you can modify labels, you can add a countdown. Like, you can't do everything you can do in OBS. But that's most of it. Like, if you can start stream, stop stream, record, and swap scenes, that's pretty much what I would need to do. It's pretty

much it. Maybe it would be nice to do things like, um, modify the elements you have, like toggle things on and off, but as it stands this is already good. So I would use that and I'm sure there are like there's like tools to control Twitch from CLI. I know there's an API for it. Introducing the Twitch command line interface. Oh. I don't know how much this supports.

But. There is a CLI interface. Okay, this is an official Twitch one. Okay. Well, Twitch has one. Cool. And I'm sure Twitch has one. Cool. And I'm sure there's one for YouTube as well. That's really cool.

That is really, really, really cool. And then there's also some... I think you could do stuff with like pulse effects if you want the audio effects and all of that sort of stuff. So you can get everything you want done on Linux. I'm looking at the stream deck. I'm considering it. Maybe I'll get it at some point in the future. Right now, I don't really have desk space.

Desk space is very valuable right now because I've still got like my TV on my desk. But when I move, then we'll have a lot more space. I'll be able to push stuff back. I'll have monitor arms. All of that sort of fancy stuff. I want to get a standing desk as well. And then...

Then we should be good. Then I will be good. And then I will maybe get one. And I will make at least two videos on it. Minimum two videos, probably three. Maybe reviewing the Stream Deck, reviewing the Stream Deck UI,

and then reviewing Stream Deck Master or doing a software showcase or whatever. Just so I can justify the purchase and pay off some of the price. If I can recover some of the price by making videos on a product, I'm going to. Why do you think I made a video about my tablet? And I'm going to be making a video about... I've been meaning to for a while about the open tablet drivers.

I haven't got to it just yet. Just because I need to slightly modify my notes. There was one part I forgot to look at and I should go and do that. I think it was like artist mode or something. I skipped over that when I initially looked at the open tablet drivers, but I'll get to that probably later this week. Because I'm actually in a really good spot right now where I've actually finished planning out my videos for the week and it's Wednesday so I got five videos planned out on Monday and then on Tuesday I wanted to make sure I had my Brave Talk video ready for Wednesday so I planned that out then and then I got six videos done in total so I'll probably go back and modify notes for some of the videos that I know needs to be modified and maybe go and like

double check some of the notes I have on on some of the software that or some of the software and some of the news that I've done the notes on already Some of the software and some of the news that I've done the notes on already. Because if I have the extra time, I might as well go and polish it rather than just going with the first draft. Most of the time I go with first draft. And that's why I occasionally make some mistakes. I do have a fun video about installing Arch that I've got planned, though,

that I'm not going to reveal because I know if I reveal it, someone's going to do it before me. I'm not going to reveal until I actually get it uploaded. But I guarantee it is going to be the best and easiest way to ever install Arch. And I don't think there's going to be anything that manages to top it, unless the thing that I'm using gets updated and makes the process even better. Hmm.

We've nearly been going for two hours. Wow. This episode has gone by really quickly. Some of the other solo episodes I've been doing recently felt like they've sort of dragged on a bit. I think it's because I didn't really have many great topics to

really talk about. It's sort of like, I prepared them last minute, yeah, they're going to be interesting, I guess, but not super exciting. A lot of the stuff I want to talk about today I am actually really excited about, and yeah, basically

speaking of things I'm excited about I have still not played Hollow Knight but I do have it on my on my list of games to play and and

and there is a there is what was it called? Where was it called? Where is it? There was some new Hollow Knight stuff that I saw recently. So maybe I should play the... I should go and play Hollow Knight before that actually comes out. What was it called? It was called

Hollow Knight Silk Song. Um. It doesn't have a, uh, release date at this point, but there's, like, an announcement or there's, like, a leaked release date or something. It looks like a cool game. Like, Hollow Knight looks really cool. I still have, I still need to play it. As I said, I still need to

play it, but I, I guarantee that when I play it, I am going to enjoy it. There is no way that I can play Hollow Knight and not enjoy this game. Like, this just looked like a ton of fun. Especially just having finished Ender Lilies. And it's sort of. It's the same sort of style. But. Hollow Knight. I imagine is considerably more polished.

I do like the hand drawn art style. That is really really pretty. And I've only ever heard good things about Hollow Knight. So. I expect it to be good. Maybe I'm going into it with like really high expectations but I don't know. Maybe it's fine in this case and the game... Look, the game is probably going to be good.

There's no way I'm going to play this and not enjoy it. I'm going to be very, very surprised if that manages to happen. Like, unless it's somehow very broken on Linux. Yeah, enjoying it is going to happen. That's how I feel about it. Because look at this. Like, look at this. How could this not be fun?

Actually, now the thing about it, if you're just watching the audio version, you are not hearing anything right now. So, okay, I can understand why the audio people might not think it's fun. And I guess to end off the episode, I want to talk about something that I don't know if anyone cares about, but apparently people still use Skype, and it's getting an update with a new theme.

I don't have anything to say about this. I'm just surprised that Skype still exists. So I used to use Skype for all my group chats, back before Discord was really popular. Skype was not a good way to manage this. Like, Skype is not a good way

to handle long-running groups. Because at some point, like, you're gonna make a mistake, you'll make a new group, and then you still have the old group and the new group, and point, like, you're going to make a mistake. You'll make a new group. And then you still have the old group and the new group. And then, like, someone's talking in one and then they're talking in the other. It's a mess. But Skype has an update to, I guess, look prettier or something.

It looks kind of like Zoom and Jitsi. Actually, to be honest, all of the video conferencing programs at this point look fucking identical, and I don't think that's a bad thing, like, they all look the same, and they all have a good UI, like, that, that, that's where it basically is, even in the, actually, we'll end it off there, even in the case of BraveTalk, which, oh, BraveTalk, BraveTalk, BraveTalk, which... Oh, BraveTalk. BraveTalk, BraveTalk. I've got a video coming out on this very soon.

Actually, no. It's going to be out by the time you see this. So BraveTalk is a jitsy instance. It's a jitsy instance that Brave is marketing as some new privacy-friendly chat service, when in reality what they did is they went to 8x8, they called them and said, hey, can we get Jitsi hosting? And then 8x8 said, okay.

And now they have Jitsi hosting. Like, they're literally just reselling Jitsi hosting as their new encrypted chat service. They're not lying about it being encrypted, and they're not lying about it being a good chat service. Brave Talk just doesn't exist, because it's just Jitsi.

It's just Jitsi, but they added... The problem it has is it has this... It has the Brave theme, so it has this really annoying purple and blue theme that really stands out. Go and compare this to running just Vanilla Jitsi where it has a grey background and is very easy to look at.

This, not so much. Not so much at all. It also has massive limitations like if you're not on Brave, you can join a call but you can't start a call. You can only do one-on-one calls if you're a free

user. If you want to do a group call, you need to pay $7 a month. $7 a month to use someone else's Jitsi instance. What? What are you saying?

Also, you... It says you don't get passwords unless you pay, but passwords are enabled, so I feel like they just have a bug. Also, they can't mute people and stuff, but that's also available for free. Also a bug. Also, they can't mute people and stuff, but that's also available for free. Also a bug. Just

go and, like, look, you can buy Jitsi hosting. Let's, okay, if you don't want to go and host it yourself, like setting up Jitsi yourself, let's see how much Jitsi hosting is. Because you can go and, like, set up you can go and, like, you can self-host it

on a $5 VPS. It's very easy. Okay, I don't want to care about a company that's doing it for €50 a month. I know there are some hosting providers for this pricing okay all of the

all of the ones I'm finding are like obsessively obscenely expensive just go and get yourself a $5 VPS and start up Jitsi and it will do everything BraveTalk does without the limitations.

The one advantage BraveTalk does have is if you're, like, the sort of person who needs to do a massive call, like you need to have, like, you know, a 100-person call. Firstly, you can do that over on YouTube with a, uh, with an unlisted link. Let's just do it, just... A video- if you need to talk to a hundred people, a video conference is not what you're doing. You're doing a livestream. Um...

But, besides that, that's basically it. If you need to do a really big call, then BraveTalk, I guess, will work for that, but there's also public instances of Jitsi you can use as well. So, it just doesn't make any sense. Like, meet.jit.si, that is the

main instance, and you can do whatever you want with that. It's fine. So, BraveTalk, the meme, Brendan Eich is trying to rebuild Mozilla, and I think that's gonna be pretty much it for me, now, I actually found, I didn't find it, someone in my Discord found a channel that I'm very happy, um, very happy to know about now. So there is a YouTube channel known as Amelia Merge. Now, this is a VTuber who is a Linux-focused VTuber who uses Gentoo. Now, Amelia Merge is a joke because Amelia Merge Emerge, get it?

haha funny, but she just started like three months ago and you know what? check her out go watch her stuff if you want to learn about random Linux stuff, she used to be doing the sort of general Linux-y content

with a focus on Gentoo. So you'll have portage stuff and I don't know what a Gentoo overlay is. Things like that. But, yeah, if you want to go see what people are doing in the Linux VTubing space, which is a

very small emerging space, check this channel out. I will be keeping an eye on on like the linux vtuber stuff because there's not really many that exist like when you look up linux vtuber you get ren and you get cyan and lots of ren and you get this person doing a testing out VTuber Unity but most of the stuff you see here is and now we've just completely left it okay now we've just completely left the Linux space. But, like, pretty much all you see is Ren. So, it's a very small space. But it's a space that I would like to see grow,

just because I think it would be entertaining. I think it would be kind of entertaining to see, like... To see just, you know... I don't know, VTubers on Linux. VTubers on Linux, there's something about that that makes it kind of entertaining to me. I think if you don't... If you don't know, VTubers on Linux. VTubers on Linux, there's something about that that makes it kind of entertaining to me. I think if you don't focus on VTubing, or if you don't focus on Linux being your core, I don't know.

I don't know. There's ways to approach this. I think if you either lean very heavily into the VTuber stuff and you're also on Linux, or you lean very heavily into the VTuber stuff, or you lean very heavily into the VTuber stuff and you're also on Linux or you lean very heavily into the VTuber stuff and where you or you lean very heavily into the Linux stuff but you're also a VTuber it could work out fairly well like if I just became a VTuber I don't think anything would really change on my channel like if I just kept doing like what I'm doing I'm just

like yo I'm gonna be a VTuber now I think that could work out kind of well I don doing, I'm just like, yo, I'm gonna be a VTuber now. I think that could work out kind of well. I don't know. I'm just spitballing stuff here, and I'll be keeping an eye on this channel, so go and subscribe to Amelia Merge, and, uh, get her to 50 or 100 subs, and, uh, hey, maybe at some point I will find somewhere to contact her and get her on the podcast. Because that would be kind of funny. That, yeah, I think that's going to be pretty much it for me then. So, if you like this and you want to go and support my podcast, my channel, all of my stuff I do. I've got a Patreon, subscribe, certainly bear a pay. That will be linked in the description down below.

This podcast is available as an audio release. Basically anywhere. Search for Brodie Robertson. Search for Brodie Robertson. No. Search for Tech Over Tea. And you'll find it on pretty much every podcast platform. There'll be RSS feeds and all of that sort of stuff. And if you're watching the video.

And you want to see the video version. This is available on YouTube and Odyssey. My main channel is Brodie Robinson. I do Linux-y stuff. Not a VTuber, sadly, but maybe one day. I've got a gaming channel called Brodie Robinson Plays for our livestream twice a week. Upload about five or so YouTube shorts. And I guess I also have a TikTok.

If you want to watch those gaming shorts on TikTok instead of on YouTube. But I would recommend not doing that. Just watch them on YouTube. They'll be out first on YouTube anyway because TikTok doesn't actually have a way to schedule stuff just one of the many things that make TikTok a horrible experience maybe there's a way to schedule on mobile

but it's not there on the web client so that's gonna be pretty much it for me be safe start VTubing on Linux and I'm out