Tech Over Tea - Linux Community Is Getting Too Hot | Solo

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

KDE is currently being brigaded over an AI policy which is really sad because this should be a happy time for the project with the 30th anniversary coming up, but there's plenty more to talk about as well.==========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==========Support The Show==========► 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 Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://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, and good evening. I'm as it was your host, Brody Robertson. And if you're a Kiti developer, keep your head down, don't get involved, don't try to argue with people, because this is going to get really bad if you ruffle the feathers a bit too much. If you don't know what I'm talking about,

there is something going around right now called KD for the people. As I'm recording this, this came out about a day ago, so it is entirely possible that by the time this uploads, things have already gotten pretty bad, but right now, it's mostly calm. So if you don't know what's going on, basically the other day, KDE proposed an AI policy. This is currently locked because some people got into a stupid argument here, some people jumped in who were not involved, and basically it got completely derby. and there is going to be a follow-up thread also made that is likely going to be just locked entirely to KD developers. The reason why this got a little bit heated, a little bit heated in the thread, but I could tell exactly where it's going to go, is because KD wasn't taking a hard stance against AI use.

The stance that Nate had proposed here was... I guess pretty lax all things considered. It wasn't a, hey, everyone should use AI or anything like that, but it was, okay, AI exists. We know the people in KDE are using AI and not just like random throwaway to, like, just random accounts, throwaway projects, anything like that. But like core developers in KDE are using AI, but they didn't have a policy on how to handle it. What can be AI? What can't be AI? what about new people coming to the project?

How should AI be handled? All of this good stuff. They just had like, it was sort of like a implied it's okay. But they didn't have any like formal documentation on what you can do with AI. So that document here, this was a follow up from an early discussion on the mailing list, basically trying to outline something. And KDE, again, is not taking a very hard. stance. And as you look through the early discussions, a lot of the people here are

relatively chill. A lot of like the big names in KDE, like Alex Paul Gonzalez, Nate Graham, obviously, Gerard Jorovek, I don't know the name, but they are marked as a developer, Nico's in here, Axelie is in here, a bunch of other, David Edmondson's in here. A lot of people, the Hardy Choker, a lot of people you know in KDE are all just like, I may not be the biggest fan of AI, but I'm okay with its use. Axelly was probably the, of like the big name, KDE people, probably the most against it. But even in their case was like, I don't like it. But if people are going to use it, this is a relatively reasonable policy. And you know what? Fair enough. Like this is the comment from Excelli here. I'm very negative about these tools,

most of the companies behind them. But KDE is trying to ensure that this is a huge. human first approach, which, fair enough. That was like a big part of what was being discussed here. There needs to be a human in the loop. You can't just like send off your agent to go and work on KDE and like leave it to itself. No one wants to deal with your chatbot, right? Like that, that's just not a thing anyone wants to do. It needs to be a like a human first interaction. Now, the problem started happening when it started to break a little bit out of the KDE developer space, you have people from Gnome join in, then you had some people from like outside the project entirely. You did have someone in KDE who was relatively negative about the tooling.

That is Sune here. This is like probably the only, I think it's the only person marked as a KD developer that was quite negative about the tool. Now I'm not, I'm not saying there's not other people in KDE that are also negative. I know people in critter are quite negative. I don't believe this is a critter. they might be. I'm actually not sure on like their project history, but I know Critter has taken a stance. Critter AI code policy. I know they have taken a stunt against AI use, or at least they, I don't know if it's an actual like proper stance or it's just a

general sentiment. I do remember seeing something a little while ago. some was banned from the forums for making AI plugins so it seems like I can't find the policy right now I'm sure it exists somewhere Critter does have a fairly negative stance against this tooling

but a lot of the people Haddy Choker Nico, Nate David Evanston ExcelE again has some like fairly negative opinions but is willing to like work with this policy but people start

discussed like AI ethics and then it started to like completely spiral out of control people who have nothing to do with this got involved people started to like have arguments about other bullshit that doesn't matter whatsoever and uh yeah as of about 22 minutes ago uh well as of a day ago Nate said we're going to open this back up in a day and then four hours ago um given this policy about contributions overall not just ones from users with kD developer account I disagree with being limited to them only. Christoph Coleman says, I think it makes sense to limit discussion

about the policy developer accounts. It will be later used by the group two and it will avoid any loud random person who can join the no state court. I understand this point here that there might be small time KD contributors that don't have a developer tag, but I do kind of agree.

This is a very contentious topic and it probably does make sense with, especially how it was initially, initially going to just lock things down initially to only people that are like, you know, have that developer credentials in KDE. Now, with that being said, that takes us to the KDE for people thing. So, this is something that was started by a person over on Mastodon. We are a community of KDE users and contributors, calling for the KDE project to adopt a non-enobest. AI policy for the KD Plasma desktop and other related components.

Recently, there's been a bit of an uproar within the KD community and within KD projects. KDECO has already declared that a policy which allows for AI use within the KDE is incompatible with KDE goals and values. What is this? I don't actually, I've not checked out all of these links here. Okay, master-done, instance is really slow.

And this is one of the big ones. This is floss.com. not social. They actually have infrastructure. This is one of the many reasons I don't use master anymore, because everything, it's just insanely slow. So is this an official account?

I don't know if it is. Given its extremely high energy and water consumption, the increased minimum system requirements drive from premature harbour obsolescence, among other very problematic social and political issues,

Gen. I slash LMs, are not compatible with the value and goals of KDECO. KD is a diverse community and the opinions of the project some KD contributors not representative of the entire community or KDEco projects.

I don't know are they a fit... Okay, okay, yes, they are. Yeah, they are officially connected to eco.kD.org. So you're already seeing a bit of a split there. You're seeing that part of KD.

So KDECO is like the the environmentally conscious side of KD. They want to talk like, you know, making sure that we are reusing old hardware, making sure that we're not overusing power. Or, like, you know, not flying, we don't need to. Just like, all this, like, normal, like, eco stuff that, um, eco stuff that you've probably heard about many times before. Um, so that part of KDE does seem, at least of that one post of the account, I don't know if everyone involved in KDE Eco of, like, the same mind. Um, but at least that one post on that account,

that is the official communication channel does have issues there. Other parts of KDE should be... KD should place a ban on generative AI in plasm and plasma components. Other parts KD.'E should be considered too. The ban should be founded on a pro-people outlook to community ethics and with respect for the work

that has gone to Kiti software and projects for decades. This isn't about figuring out the exact percentage of AI and you commit. Things will slip through. This is about signaling to the outside what kind of community KDE is and keeping true to Kiti's vision for the future about privacy and control, but first and foremost about the people of KDE. Other projects have shown the way, Zig, Elementary, OBS, and many more have taken a stance.

This is going to be... I said it in my video on the KDE AI policy. I do think this is going to be a... I do think this is going to be like one of those like breaking points. It's going to be one of those like hammers that is used to like beat on projects for a very long time going forward. There, I don't, I legitimately do not think there is going to be any way to coexist in a space that has this much of a like fundamental disagreement on this, on whether or not AI should be used.

Like, it would be like having, it's kind of like the idea of open source and source available. Like these cannot exist in the same space without there being fundamental clashes on like, core values. And I do think that's kind of kind of where this is going to go. I don't see anything I don't see anything slowing down. If anything, I only see the heat like

being turned up more and more as more and more projects are making use of AI. It erodes trust in the project and makes more difficult to review code, harms privacy and exerts many more negative effects on many people as shown by Amnesty International.

The proposed policy ignores many of the issues around human rights and many harms of this technology, pushing the responsibility to the contributor without addressing the wider reaching consequence, even outside of KDE Plasma. Additionally, the proposal to decide on this policy without wider community involvement, works into the interest of the public on the issue and could be seen as malicious. A ban should include outputs of generative AI tools in code and assets as well as using it for MR descriptions, issues, or translation.

Uh, that... This is an interesting one. This is a very interesting one. Because... Are we talking general project translation or individual translation? Because you're talking about individual translation, then we get into a realm of accessibility tooling. Should we be banning the use of this tooling?

If that means locking off certain people who do not speak English from getting involved in FOSS. Because, like it or not, Foss is primarily... primarily English focus. Yes, there are French projects out there and Chinese projects and all of these different projects, but like the majority of the Foss World and specifically KDE is English focused. If we're talking about like application translations, I think you have more of an argument there. But the idea of MR description and issues, this already was included as a ban as part of the policy. What it was not included in the policy was a ban on AI code and assets. related community spaces should also be considered to avoid vibe coding the introduction of AAR topic into Academy and KD Planet

and the more normalization of this practice in the KDE community. Now, this shouldn't mean this ban will be eternal but there is no truly ethical LM or diffusion model right now on the market that would align with Amnesty's analysis.

I'm not really sure why we're using Amnesty International as the baseline for what we should do in the post world but sure. Note, neither the organizers nor the Sineese of this. paper condone harassment of anyone involved or in support of the above-linked proposal.

This is where we start getting in... I'll show you the FAQ as well, but this is where we start getting into a bit of a mess. The FAQ is all... actually, I think it's all like pretty... Pretty basic stuff, actually. I'm not going to show you who's on the list. If you want to see who's on the list, check it out for yourself. Because whilst they say they do not condone harassment, and whilst they say that it's both the...

organized in the Sienese. I know where this goes and I know where this is already going. There is already a lot of, how would you put it? I guess AI shaming, AI-focused harassment that comes out of places like Mastodon, like Blue Sky, where if someone, like notably, a few weeks back there was paint.net had an experimental, I think it was experimental Linux support, if I recall correctly. Paint.net Experimental Linux support. Oh no, no, I think it was experimental Linux support through wine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was Linux support through wine. Rick Brewster was working on this. I think this is like the lead guy or the creator or something. Working in that,

said he was using AI tooling and over on Blue Sky got absolutely torn to shreds about it and was just like, just open harassment around using this tooling. I understand that a lot of people don't like AI tooling, but I don't think that going around and harassing developers is the way that you're going to convince anyone not to use this tooling. All I think that does is convince people that you can't be reasoned with and convince people not to work with you, and instead go over to the people who are, at least, willing to work with this tooling.

I think if you don't like AI, the absolute worst thing you can do is run around and go and harass people. Because I think a lot of people don't realize that the group that actually cares is an ever-shrinking group. I've said it before, but I

know people who work in education and everyone in their classes are using AI. Like this is, I don't think this idea that, oh, young people hate AI or AI is just going to like go away with the next generation. I don't think that's going to happen. I think it is going to be like a smartphone thing where people growing up now that have access to this tooling, they're not going to imagine a world that exists before everyone has a smartphone, before the internet is available, before like these things which are now core part to what people,

know and use, even if people don't like them. I don't like smartphones. I don't like, a lot of people don't like smartphones. A lot of people don't like window. A lot of people don't like AI, but it is becoming one of those things which I think is like ingrained into what people do. And my concern is as the heat gets like keeps getting turned up more and more and more, this is going to hit a boiling point. And I feel really bad for the key D developers who are going to have to deal with this. Because if KDE does not say absolute ban on all AI code, which I know there are KD developers who are actively using AI right now, like not just a little bit here and there, but I know there are big name KDE people. I'm not going to say who they are,

but if you look through the commits, you will work it out very quickly, who are very, very very, very, maybe not like pro AI, maybe they would prefer if AI didn't exist, but if it does exist, they're going to use it. Not like random little contributors here and there, but like core people,

core people in many cases that are getting paid to work on Linux, getting paid to work on KDE, maybe that shortens the list a little bit, that's all I'll say. I see where this is going. I see where this is going,

and I don't, like, look at the, look at these sort of levels of, how'd you say it? These steps of increasing extremism of how people talk about these topics, there is like two or three steps away from KD being labeled like the worst of the worst thing. And when that happens, that label doesn't disappear. Like that, no matter what KD does at that point, that label doesn't disappear. And that's going to mean that everyone involved in that project also has that.

And at the same time, then also is just like free target for harassment. This, like the heat needs to be turned down here. Like this, like we, like people need to take a chill pill, chill out and not keep this going. Because I think within a couple of days, if this continues the way that I know it has continued in the past, I know where this goes.

I've spoken to key to people. I've said, just keep your heads down. Do not get involved. There is nothing that you can say that is going to like alleviate any of the pain that is going to come from this. There is nothing you can do to get involved in these discussions

that is going to change anyone's mind because a lot of the people involved in these discussions are not having like logical, reasonable discourse. They are having an emotional discussion and you will not convince someone their emotions are wrong. Like, that's just not going to happen. Now, maybe they have a point and maybe AI shouldn't be used in KDE, but the way this is going to happen, unless KDE says full ban on anything, full ban on everything going on, I know where this goes. I know where this goes and be safe. be safe

stay off social media don't get involved don't try to fight these people just be safe yeah yeah maybe a lot of the time of this comes out everything's just

blown over and nothing to worry about maybe I just I don't see that happening I don't see that happening because there are some there is a again I'm not going to say names but there's a handful of fairly large names on Mastodon

that have already signed this, that are already promoting this. And... Yeah. Let's talk about something a little bit more positive. Okay? Let's talk about something that is not a hellscape that is about to form. So, KDE is coming up on their 30th anniversary. That is on October 14th.

And with that, Colt Repo, who is a YouTuber that has a number of quite... interesting documentaries. We have one on, okay, that's, other videos as well. Documentary for developments, here we go. They have one on Java, C++, Python, and, like, you know, documentaries

on these like really, really, like GraphQL, MBAJ, Elix, and they're doing one for KDE, and there's Mr. Nate Graham, they're doing one for KD that releases alongside the 30th anniversary of the project.

Check out the trailer. It's a neat trailer. I'm very excited. I don't know anything that's in it. I think this is not sponsored. I'm not being sponsored by there or anything like that. I just want this to get attention. I want people to know about the history of KDE because there are a lot of really cool stuff that happens in the Foss World that happen in KDE that a lot of people just have no idea about. And this interview is going to talk to a lot of people who were like very critically involved in the project, either today or in the past and everything I've seen of it.

Like the trailer so far looks super cool. I want to see this get like over 100K views before the document it comes out. And when it does come out, I'm absolutely going to promote it then as well. So, yes, be sure to go and check that out. Alongside that, I didn't mention this last time, but I'll mention it here because it's cool as well. I'll turn it down. We'll play the trailer for this one. KDE is finally after I have mentioned it a million times,

and other people mentioned a million times and said they absolutely should do this. Finally, and they've done one in the past, but finally once again, releasing a conky plushy. How it took them this long to do it? I don't know, but it is finally goddamn happening. It is still available for pre-order.

I believe the pre-orders end on the... I want to say the 30th anniversary. No. They end three days after the 30th anniversary. So you have until October 17th if you want to buy one. So go support KDE. There is a limit of 10 plushies per person, which is a lot of plushies. but if you want to spend

$790 Australian dollars to buy 10 plushies you're allowed to you're definitely allowed to and if you're friends you know you can all buy 10 plushes I don't know what kind of split Wait

Around half the price we go to KDA Yeah okay there we go Around half the price is going to go to KDA Okay So um If you're not effective make like a 35-ish Australian dollar donate, wait, 40, roughly 40 Australian dollar donation.

And you want to get a plushy as well? Go buy the plushy. I think it looks cute. I think it looks neat. And I am, uh, I haven't ordered one yet, but I will definitely have to go and, uh,

we'll see, we'll see what shipping's like, because I feel like shipping might, end up being a little bit expensive. Yeah. I'll see. I'll have a look at how much shipping is. And assuming it's not too crazy,

I will definitely have to get at least one. And hey, get one yourself as well. Go support the project. Go help out, especially in these dark times of need. Also, also, whilst we're still on KDE Um, Academy 2026 is going on and alongside that, they are also being

fairly good at uploading clips from Academy. This is something I have bugged every single con. I've bugged them about for like so many fucking years and finally, we're getting to the point now where we're actually seeing clips being uploaded in a reasonable time. They have someone who's clearly doing it,

getting everything out quickly, which is very, very cool. They're not really bothering with thumbnails this year because who the fuck cares? That doesn't actually matter anyway. Just upload the clips and it'll be fine. But if you're curious about what has been going on in KDLand, this is absolutely worth

coming through and checking out. You've got one here about work that Nuno and Philip Fila are doing on oxygen as you might have seen from me. I am still... You can't really see it because... Actually, you can't see it because I'm not capturing that. I am still

using the oxygen theme on KDE. I really like it. The oxygen theme is sick and it seems like Nuno is working on a follow-up spiritual successor, some sort of thing

that is like the the future of what oxygen is going to be. Alongside that, you have a talk here from... Where was it? You have some work by Andy Betts. Andy Betts is the basically lead guy for Ocean. Ocean is the, like, new design language that is being worked on for...

It's basically going to be the continuation after breeze. Now, I'd have to see the dark version and see how I really feel about it. But basically, Andy is like the... Andy is like the... He is the design lead of what's going on with... with Plasma at this point. Nuno is the design lead of the past.

Andy is design leader of the future. I'm liking work as coming out of both of them, and I'm glad there is a... I'm glad there's a lot of, like, really interesting design work coming out of KDE. Also, really interesting design work... like, actually... caring about people being out of theme stuff.

The idea of people theming applications on Linux, I've spoken to many people in certain other projects who are like, no, theming is dead on Linux desktop. No, themeing is, no, application developers, they don't like theming existing. And then you have KDU over here who are like, what if we just improve our theming engine make theming actually a million times easier?

What if we also make it easier to theme third-party applications as well? What if we have everything? What if we make it so you can just make all your... replication look consistent, regardless of what, you know, don't theming our apps might say about about theming. Oh, but don't theme our apps is not about, it's not about individual users, it's about developers, about distros. How do you, how do you theme your apps differently from a distro? Well, you don't, so, you know, so I haven't rambled about don't theme your apps in a while. But we have that one. There was, I've not watched most of them. There's one here, oh, there's a

sponsor one here. There was one here about. KDE goals as well. Yeah, KD goals and Upward Spiral. So this talks about the KDE goals from 2024 to 26 and then also announces what the goals from 2026 to 2028

are going to be. Basically the like the guiding principles of the project. The thing that is going to like direct the project forward towards these are like our core focus points. Honestly like

Katie is in such a it's in such a healthy state right now I think I might be also part of the reason why there's like this this drama around the AI stuff as well because Katie is in a healthy state and other projects are a less healthy state one might say that does seem to be a bit of like how would

jealousy maybe good word to put it because there's always this idea in the Foss base that like we are not competitors, we're all aiming towards the same thing, we're all trying to make FOSS better. But look, when there's only a certain amount of funding that flows around the Foss world, some projects get some, some projects don't, there's always going to be a bit of competitiveness, a bit of jealousy, a bit of like, hey, why are we not the ones who are getting this kind of thing? And yeah, either way, I do have to be.

some ideas for a 30th anniversary video. I've been thinking of doing a video, like, maybe I'd do a video on CDE. Maybe I'd do that before the anniversary. Like a video on CDE talking about the, so if you don't know, CDE is the common desktop environment. CDE was the project that directly inspired the KDE desktop. CDE was basically the This was basically the standard desktop in the Unix world Up into the I want to say late 90s I want to say late 90s when it kind of got

Yeah, yeah So Late 90s and then it got ported over to Red Hat Linux Not Rail Rail, Rail didn't exist yet Red Hat Linux But this is CDE And if you go back and look at very early versions of KDE

You're gonna realize Yeah KDE was heavily inspired with it It's like this view of the workspaces here On Linux you've probably seen it nowhere else besides KDE This is where it came from These icons look basically the same Yes, some of the interface stuff is a bit different

because this is based on motif Motif? Yes. Yes. Based on motif. A motif is a very striking kind of toolkit. But if you go back and look at, uh, let's see, let's see a picture of KD1. The K desktop environment one. Yeah, here we go. Here is 0.1. So this is before first release. I guess we don't have the icons then. But you do, as you see, you have the like the workspace thing here. this is from the Alpha in 97 here we go okay yeah

yeah so this gives you a bit more of a better look at what it looked like when I actually released there's obviously like a lot of very obvious similarities with the design language being used at the time now obviously

KDE1 was a bit more grey yeah quite a bit more grey than CDE was it is kind of funny how much of this is just actually cloned straight from Windows like this interface is actually just

ripped entirely from Windows I'd have to go and check what screen savers existed in I guess 95 because this is 97 so in Windows 95 because I have a feeling of screen savers are probably

like almost one for one ripped from that as well but I was thinking of doing a video on this and then And maybe also a video on like the going through each version of KDE. Or I guess at this point, it was the cool desktop environment or the K desktop environment. And just showing like how things progressed because I think a lot of people forget that KDE used to look very, very different.

Because a lot of people, like when did Plasma 5 released? People have been so used to seeing Breeze for so long that I don't think that there's a legitimate. A lot of people that have no idea that KDE used to even look different. Yeah, Plasma 5 was in 2014. That's when Breeze started being used. Like, this look, not the blurry look. This look has been roughly what KDE Plasma's looked like for 12 years now. Now, obviously, there's been some changes.

I've added some little things here and there, but like this overarching style has been how it's looked for about 12 years now. Before that, though, in KDMA, KD4 is where oxygen came from. And KDE4 had like an entirely, entirely fucking different vibe to it. Like this is what KDE4 was looking like. Yeah, it has the same like layout and stuff. But the design language, the way colors were used, the like higher detail icons, all of this stuff.

Like that, that's something which does not exist at all today. So that could be fun. I don't know. Might do that. Then give me an excuse to talk about projects that, like, forked off of KDE along the way. Things like the Trinity desktop as well. This one right here. I believe this forked off during...

Is the Trinity forked off during KDE3? Wait. Trinity desktop. I want to say KD3. Also the end of KD4. I don't remember. Yeah, so they forked off in 3.5. I don't know if a fork of plasm 5.

Oh, wait, wait, what is Katana? KDE Katana, or is that Plasma 5? No, Katana was a fork of KDE4. I don't know of a KDA5 fork then. There's probably like one that exists, but I don't know of it. At least, like, okay, I mean a fork that is actually a real project. Not just like someone forked a project

because, you know, they feel like forking a project, but forked a project and actually made something, like a, you know, akin to a cinnamon, akin to a Trinity, things like that, where it's actually like a real existing project that people actually might consider using. So, no, that could. be fun. That could be fun. We're only about, uh, as a recording, we're about 20-ish days away from the 30th.

Honestly, it's so fucking cool. It is so cool that we have a project that's been around for this long. Next year, I don't know the date. Gnome. Gnome Wikipedia. I want to say, August? Is there 30th? No, not Ghanome Shell. Gnome Desktop.

Wikipedia. The entire, the overarching project. Oh, okay, no. It is March 90. Wait, no. That's not right. 90... Uh, that's not right.

Wait, is it? There's not two years to win the project, is there? Wait. I thought Gnome was... 98. History. Yeah, okay, sorry. Yeah, okay, okay.

No, Gannon was started on 90s. August 15th, 97. What the hell is this, then? Release 99. Why did it say release 99? Or did it take two years to get to the point where it was actually considered release ready? Um...

Is Fender's part, because the K-distance... Yeah, I... I don't know where the 99 comes from then. I'm not going to check it right now. If somebody knows why it says March 99, do let me know about that. It probably is like first initial release or something like that.

That would be my best logical guess. Yeah. I don't know. Not important. But yeah, next year is also Gnomes 30th as well, which is, you know, as much as I might, like, meme on the Gnone project, it is kind of crazy that the two oldest running Linux desktop environments we have that are, like, homegrown on Linux,

are also, like, about a year away from each other. Like, there's a lot of projects in the Foss World, which was started, like, around about the same time. Like, Debbie and Slackware, I think they're, like, a month apart, if I remember correctly. I want to say it's, like, August and September or something. Um... Yeah, Debian started in August 93, and then Slackware...

Slackware was... July. Yeah, July 93. Especially with all these, like, older, long-running projects. There's so many people that were, like, initially excited that a lot of things kind of just, like, got going around the same time. And you have first... Like, when you're a project that early on, right, and then something becomes bigger later on,

you kind of get this, like, first move as advantage, where you're there as things are like beginning, as the ball is getting rolling, so you kind of get like, you know, rising tides, raise all boats kind of deal. As long as the project has some sort of like sensible structure around and people don't hate the project, it's going to like massively grow over time

as everything else is growing as well. So, wish the best luck for the goal project. Very excited for the 30th anniversary of KDE, and hopefully we get to see another 30 more. We'll see. We'll see. One more topic on Gonoam, on Ganoe whilst we are here, and then we'll finally move on from KDE. So, I mentioned the KDE goals thing a bit earlier. I do briefly want to talk about the KDG goals that we have, the ones that are actually selected.

That is KDE for enterprises and deployments, better documentation, and next generation staling for KDE. These were the, of the proposed goals, the ones which were selected. So there were other things which were also proposed, which, some of which were not ready to, uh... Some of which were definitely not ready to vote on, like sandbox all the things, why was this not ready to vote on? Who proposed this? Yeah, they just didn't have anyone that was interested in getting involved in it, so that was the main problem there. Accessibility in KDE, they also had no. no one that was a line for this, but people were interested in getting involved.

The main issue is under KDE rules for goals, because they want to like focus on different things, they don't like to have the same goal two times in a row. Also, the person who proposed this, like, needs to be the champion for it. They need to be like the leader of the proposal. Um, I think there was some other one. Yeah. Seamless input accessibility. Yeah, this is a, these are like kind of related and probably

should have been just merged together. Again, no supporters, no champions, anything. A lot of people just did not read the rules for like how proposals actually worked. Like Nate wrote a blog post on this. I made a video on this. People just ignored the rules. just started proposing things without any, like, any forethought that, like, you have to actually build up a team to make something happen.

The other ones are actually available for voting where KDE Linux, Pillar of KDE. KDE Linux is the KDE Homegrown Distro, improve UX of customization and themeing process with third-party content, basically, theming of apps outside of KDE, whether that be GTK or IST or whatever else might be up there. Improve GUI configuration UX by expanding system settings. This is something a lot of people have complained about in KDE, especially people that come from

on the desktops. The KDE settings menu can be it can definitely be a bit intimidating, but I don't know if just like improving the settings menu can be a goal for the next three years. Like that seems

like it should be a part of a larger goal. Make Plasma Smart is a weird one. It's something I've... I don't really get myself, but I guess could be, like, kind of neat. Basically, the idea is adding in, like, voice commands, having, like, auto-grouping of stuff. Like, a lot of things which, like, sound cool on paper,

but I think it's just such, like, a fundamental change to how Plasma works, and I don't really know... It's kind of just adding features for an audience that doesn't exist in hopes that an audience comes along for it. it. I think something like that kind of makes more sense to at least prove through plugins before you go and bring it mainline in the KDE. Show that a lot of people want this and then when a lot of people want this, actually bring it in. Unlike another desktop, which has really popular plugins and then it never brings in the features. I wonder who that could be.

Prepare Plasma Mobile for Daily Drive Billy. Pretty obvious one. Put more effort into Plasma Mobile. I look, as neat as that would be, I do think the whole Linux on Mobile Space it really needs a bigger push behind it if it's ever

going to be anything. Because a little bit of effort here and there I don't think it's just a KDE thing. I think you need like hardware manufacturers on board willing to make their devices not locked to Android. Which

is a whole mess of a situation and I don't really see this as neat as it would be I just don't really see it being like a critical thing for plasma and then first class gaming experience

which granted it probably already is right now I think this one would make a lot of sense because Valve is you know, they've got their contract through Tech Paladin, which used to be a blue system. Like, this would, this would be cool. And I think would make sense as one of the ones I would like to see. So the ones that got selected were KD for enterprise and deployments, better documentation, and next generation starting for KD.

The ones I think, I do think these are reasonable goals. I think these are pretty good goals. I, it's hard to say right, because I actually. and really excited for all of these. Better documentation is something KD is needed for so, so goddamn long. Next Generation styling is such a big one. Katie has a styling problem. Not that you can style things,

but there is 12 different styling engines. It's like five, which is a lot of them. Like five different ways of styling apps. And they've got to like, if they want to modify breeze, they've then got to implement it in all of these different styling systems. And all of them have very subtle differences.

so if you compare apps that are supposedly running the same default breeze theme, they will have elements that look slightly different that should not look slightly different. But first class gaming experience, I think, would be cool as well. Make plus a sign. KD Linux, I think, is cool, but... I don't know, I think you got to get KD Linux more out the door before you try to make it a pillar.

Maybe if you make it the pillar from 2028, to like 2030 that would make more sense but I think it's still a little bit too early on to like make that like a pillar of where the project is going but KD for Enterprise and Deployments

this is one I know a lot of people don't necessarily care about but is apparently a fucking lot lot of KD developers really care about it but is one I really really do care about

I want to see a world, and I've said this in so many videos before, I want to see a world where rel brings KDE back. Because I want to say seven? When did REL drop KDE? Yeah, when did REL drop KDU? They dropped it in 7.6 in late 2018. So after rel 8, it was Gnome exclusive. There is no reason why that couldn't happen again.

There's absolutely no reason why KDE could not take over the enterprise space. That's not impossible. And honestly, I think it would be a much better fit for the enterprise space. A lot of those people are probably coming from Windows and going to something like Gnome is, you know, Ghanome is a very opinionated desktop. Very opinionated design, very opinionated styling that I guess is fine. But I would like to see Katie getting more attention there. And I would like to see what could be done there if you put the effort into making it like a, again, a first class experience that is available.

there. Fixing up issues, spending the next three years. And also, this is something that they've received funding from the German government for. In case you don't know, um, KD is also, I believe it was it started in Germany? I know it started in Europe. Um, the KD.EV is German. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course it is. It is an EV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a Engetranagar-Verin. Yes, those. Um, Yeah, so it is, the KDEV, the like KDE nonprofit is German. KDE was started in Germany, which is cool. I think it's pretty neat. I don't know.

Actually, it's kind of funny because wasn't... I know some of the early founding members of Gnome were from Brazil, but where was Gnome actually started? because the Ghanome Foundation is in California Um Every time I look up Ganyome It takes into the Gnome Shell page, not the Ganyome page History

Miguel de Casa Mexico, was it Mexico? I thought it was Brazil for so. Why don't think Brazil? Okay, it was started in North America and the Foundation is in California. I do think it is very, very, very amusing that even in the Foss world, there is this like rivalry between Europe and America.

I think there's very... Obviously, there are people that work on both projects that are from both contents. But I do think that even outside of the like large business tech world, you cannot escape that. Even in the Foss world, it is there. Oh, right. I was like, where... how do we get here? Um, yeah, no, we're talking about the, um, Katie. goals. Right, the KDG in Enterprise. If you can get KDN Enterprise,

then you can get Enterprise sponsors. And you can get enterprise sponsors, that's more money. And KDI has been let's just say a lot more willing to work with large businesses than certain other projects have been, and then wonder why they don't get funding from it.

Yes. I honestly, I wish to best luck here. There are some big names involved in this. There's a lot of people involved in this. Like basically, basically anyone that you know the name of in KDE probably is involved in KD for Enterprise and Deployments. You've David Edmondson, you have Neal. I don't know what Kai is involved in, but I know I've seen their name around a bunch. You have Nate. You have Excelli, you have Tsella, you have Tobias Fella, Sean Dunn, Haddy Choker. I'm not sure about Matthew Vanderpul or Shan Shah, but I know I've seen their name somewhere.

Same with Sebastian Sauer as well. But, yeah, I want to see, I want to see a day where KDE becomes the face of the Linux desktop. And we're on that path. We are absolutely on that path. the Steam deck uses KDE, the Steam machine uses KDE, a lot of the new people coming over to Linux are using KDE, some are using Hyperland because of Amachi, but a lot of them are using KDE because,

especially a lot of the YouTubers, they try out Gnome, then they realize that Gnome has some like that shit design choices, and then DaVinci Resolve doesn't work on Gnome because DaVinci is not going to support some like weird, broken design choice to not have service side deck. which is still such a stupid issue that doesn't need to exist on Ganoe. And then Ganoom has a bunch of a weird design choice, like not having a system tray and having like, having the requirement to install a external settings menu to access

basic settings. And yeah, yeah. Oh, you also had Fedora adopting Fedora KDE as one of their mainline spins. I think it'll be very interesting if Ubuntu did a similar thing. Imagine if Ubuntu made Kibbuntu like a mainline Ubuntu version. I don't think it's going to happen, but it would be kind of funny. I think much more likely, with Fedora KDE being a mainline version of Fedora, rel re-adopting KDE as a base version of REL, I do think is possible.

it would have to be do my thing is going to happen next it would have to be like two or three releases away so it would be like six or so years away but it would be it would be very cool it would be very cool

I would be incredibly excited if it does happen some people would be less excited but you know since we're on the topic of the I guess we're on the topic but we mentioned it Um, the whole steam machine briefly want to show you something.

Where is it? There it is. J-sauks, J-sauks, J-sucks, whatever you want to call them, launch the E-Inc and Pixel Matrix faceplates for the Steam Machine. So you may recall back in the early showings of the Steam Machine. E-ink faceplate. They, whatever can find the original image. Is that one of the...

Well, I guess other people have also been building them as well. So we have this person here. I built the interface E-ink faceplate for the... Wait, or is this... Oh no, this? Yeah, yeah. This is the person who actually built it. Okay, okay.

So yeah, no, this is the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Valve released the document... for building them, this happened a couple of months ago. Like everything you need to go and build it if you want to and I guess that was a Reddit post

of the announcement. I didn't know there was actually Reddit post for it. But from there like in the original is this the original picture? I think this was the original picture. Yeah, yeah, this says Fremont. This is the original picture where they were showing it off and that was like, yeah, we're just not going to sell it.

But now, now, obviously you can make them but also you can go and buy them from JS Orx. I don't believe... Yeah, so they're not released yet. It's just a pre-order. But for... Am I going to docks myself? No.

For 99 Australian... 99 US dollars, you can get the E-ink panel, which looks neat. Or for actually cheaper, because E-ink is just expensive, you can get the pixel matrix as well, which is also super sick. So if you want to have like, you know, you want to do a picture on the front of it or some other bullshit, that is something that you can absolutely go and do. Which is really cool. Now, is it something that actually matters?

Not really. I guess in this context, it probably is neat. You can have your system usage on the panel. That is, I think that is kind of cool. Especially if you're worried about, like, using too much whatever, or, I don't know, you want to have an FPS counter on your desk for some fucking reason. I guess you can do that. But, you know,

Yeah Yeah It is kind of sad that the Release of the Steam frame has been a bit of mess though I know a lot of people were Or like It's VR so a lot of people are always going to be like

I don't like VR anyway And I'm kind of in the I don't really care about VR camp But It would have been cool if it was If it actually was something that could come out And like Sort of change the industry in some way

And that's what I had hoped for both the machine and the frame. Both of them, I wish, had come out and just fundamentally change something. And they just, it's just so hard to do so with the way that RAM pricing is right now. Like, nothing, people are still, people's prices for RAM is still anchored

before the RAM prices went up. So anything that releases is just going to be crazy, crazy expensive. And it's a good thing they're still anchored high up because people still fucking remember that RAM used to be cheaper. But it does mean that anything that comes out is just going to be wildly too expensive. That is just, even if it's like a solid device, if it's a cool idea, it just can't grab people's attention in the same way. Which does make me worried about like a Steam deck too. I know obviously there's been like talks about it and it's like, I don't know.

I and we just don't really there's no indication that anything's going to change anytime soon right I've talked about in previous episodes I'm not gonna like I'm not gonna bring the charts up again here

but like RAM prices they've come down maybe like 5% but they came down 5% of 300% where they were sitting right so it's like oh you know

you went through the moon and then you like come back down to the fucking the app atmosphere. So I was like, yeah, okay, it's better than it was maybe, but it's still fucking cooked. Like, come back down to earth, let us see real pricing again. And with AI getting considerably better, with more and more people using AI, I don't see developers really turning away from it. I don't see people in the general public turning away from it. I've seen like what art generation.

is like now and you can say there's no soul in it, but there's no soul on a lot of the art that people commission. Anyway, it's just like, I don't see how you, the genie's not going back in the bottle. People can say, oh, but like, we went back in the bottle with NFTs and yeah, because NFTs, there was no bottle. There was no use case. There was nothing. There was no genie.

There was no bottle with NFTs. It, like that was just like a pump and up scam. That's all NFTs were. This has already put people out of employment. this is fundamentally change industries. And I don't see how outside of like ludicrous real world token pricing, you could ever turn back on that. And I don't know if production,

if they're ever going to like increase production to the point where things can keep back up again, it's not even just that, like, I don't think they're ever just going to lower prices because people are still like willing, to buy it. My housemate's been saying, like, oh, do, like, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think people are just going to stop owning computers?

Like, how do you think gaming is going to work in the future? And I've said the answer. I don't know if I've said it here before, but the answer is very simply cloud computing. That's where things are going. That is the direction that people are going with their personal computing devices. and I know it's been tried before but the difference is when it's been tried before

hardware was also cheap now you don't have that now you have expensive hardware and cloud computing it's not good it's definitely not good but it's definitely a lot better than it used to be and a lot of people are willing to use it now and I do think if you if you introduce it

and then manage to convince people to get onto it that are young you just basically cook an entire generation I think if that can happen if you can get people like are climatized to it climatized to not buying computers stuff like that which is the direction things are kind of already going anyway

that is kind of where personal computing is going to be where you have a either you use your phone or a minimal powered computing device and then its core function is just cloud computing being online all of that kind of stuff I don't think it's going to be a smooth transition

I don't think it's going to be a easy transition I don't think it's going to be a fast transition but I do think that is that is the direction that I see things moving right now and I don't know unless you can get back to cheap computer prices I just I don't see

I don't see what other option there could possibly be outside of the fact that a lot of people just don't really use a computer in their personal time, right? A lot of people, their computing device, is their phone. And you want to know your fucking, a tough one for phones. It actually doesn't matter what the cost of a phone is.

It actually doesn't matter. Because most people are not buying a phone. Most people are getting a contract. They're paying for their phone plan alongside their phone. and we'll spend like, you know what, let's find out. Let's say, we'll do Australia, we'll do America. What is the average phone plan in the US? Because I know the US has like ludicrous fucking car loans.

Anyone in the US, I don't know why you guys are so obsessed with expensive cars. There is no average phone plan in the US. No, there is an average phone plan. That would be the phone plan. Uh, okay, wait, let's, uh, let's, how much do people on average pay for their phone in the US? So this, I wanted to include both the phone plan, but also the, um, include the phone. Okay. Okay. Let us see. Um, wait. How about six hundred thirty?

Do you guys, wait, do you guys not pay crazy? Okay, I'm seeing like fucking a bunch of different... It's okay, it seems like for like a single person like 80 to a hundred and ten dollars. Um, what about Australia? There's no way it's that low. There's, there's no way it's that low on average. Maybe you guys are just so, cooked by your cars that you can't afford a phone. Maybe that's what it is. Okay, apparently people spend less in Australia. I don't believe that. That seems off to me.

But a lot of people just don't buy phones, right? Like, I buy my... Every time I get a phone, I buy my phone outright. I buy my phone outright. I don't want to... deal with this bullshit of like worrying about like, oh, well, how much are they going to upcharge me by like merging my service plan into my phone? So you can like, this is why people were not worried about $1,500 phones or $2,000 phones because a lot of people, if you split it across, you know, like a 24 month contract or something, people will pay. And this is the same thing with like car stuff in the US.

If you have like a fucking like a 72 month loan on a $70,000 car Oh well Actually me $70,000 is probably a bit much On like a $50,000 car

Suddenly oh well You know I can I can I can spend $800,900 On a car a month Like What Like my car as well I

I bought outright as well. I spent like 10 grand on it and I'm gonna have it for the next who knows how many years. This idea of like buying the most expensive phone or the most expensive... People who buy new cars

that don't have the money to just... I don't know why people buy new cars. The whole buying new cars thing is so fucking weird to me outside of actually having like, you know, you're making good money. I couldn't even even

fathom the idea of buying a new car. And people will throw things around like, oh, well, safety ratings and it's safe and it's, I've got to buy the car because it's going to be safe for my kids. It's just like, you know that cars in 2024 were safe, right? Cars were in 2022 were safe, right? It's not like cars just suddenly became safe in the current year and then everything before the current year is just not safe, right? I think a lot of people actually don't know this. I don't know how we got here. I actually have no... Oh, I think I was talking about cloud computing. Oh, I got side dungeon real bad there. Holy shit. Okay, yeah.

Okay, right-o, right-o. Um, uh, yeah. Goddair. Goddare. That happened. That happens occasionally. Yep. Yep. Okay, well, cloud computing or whatever I was talking about.

Sure, yep. You know what? I want to talk about something kind of funny. We talked about AI a bit earlier, but I want to... You know how people talk about like the whole like AI water stuff and people entirely misunderstand how much water is actually used by these AI tools and like to think it's devouring the oceans or something? It uses a trillion liters of water or a day or whatever fucking numbers people throw out.

If you actually want to look at, if you actually want to look it up, the AI water stuff is entirely fake. People misunderstand the idea of a closed system. People think that the water circulating through the system is the amount of water being used. Not important. Not what I actually want to talk about. Just want to talk about the AI

water stuff. But relating to AI water, schools trial AI leak detection technology to save water. AI is being used to save water. AI is being used to reduce water usage. This is out of Australia. This is the ABC, not the American Broadcasting Company, the Australian Broadcasting Company.

AI technology being trialled in New South Wales to clamp down on water leaks in schools and government buildings. The state's head of water efficiency program says the technology could lead to 2,700 mega liters of water being set up. saved every year. I notice what the government is trailing art fish of intelligence to catch the millions of liters of water lost by leaks in skills Taifs. Taif's is like Tafe is the

What does Tafe stand for? What the fuck does Taif actually stand for? What does... It's basically like tertiary education. It's like trade school. Taif stand for in Australia. Technical and further education. Basically

trade school. If you're doing like an electrician apprenticeship That's where you're doing your schooling You're doing like nursing Things like that you do it Actually maybe not nursing But if you're doing like a trade You'll definitely be going to TAFE

You're being a bricky a sparky Is there a funny name for plumbers I don't think so Shitty The technology analysis reports From Smart Meters to identify leaks before sending alerts to agencies. I've seen one toilet leak 7 million liters.

What? Information about leaks is collated into a portal that allows site managers to monitor multiple locations at once. If he's the site manager looking at after 50 different schools, then he has 50 different logins for 500 sites and becomes unworkable really quickly. The technology developed with teams from Griffith University is being funded by a $4 million dollar investment through the New South Wales water efficiency program. Preparing for the next drought.

My job is to think about the next drought. It also saves a lot of money in water along the way, but in droughts, you can't roll out big projects like this. The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast a strong El Nino until at least autumn 2027. Water is almost valuable and precious resource, and we want to make every drop count, particularly as we enter drier summer conditions, she said. This is technology that can go further with the potential to be rolled out

across other sectors and into homes, helping households and businesses take greater control of their water use. Probably should be expanded for gas leaks as well. I assume there's some way. Well, you can detect a gas leak. So presumably there is a way to build a gas... like a gas meter that can detect

if there is a gas leak. Presumably there would have to be a way to do so. I don't know I'm not sure about that I am not a I am not a gas man whatever a gassy that's not what they're called but I'm

yeah a lot of houses don't have gas but even so I think it's kind of funny I think it's kind of funny to talk about a story like this with you know people talk about the how much how much water is being wasted by all this good stuff

it's kind of funny to see it being used the way to save water and I think there's a lot of there are a lot of interesting use cases for AI that a lot of people just don't talk about because if you talk about them, it destroys the idea that there is absolutely nothing good

about this technology, right? Like we've talked about, I've probably talked about in the past, like it being used for early cancer detection, right? That is something where it is a fundamentally outright good thing that the tech is being used.

If you can detect a cancer lump, a cancer, growth, a cancer tumor, like six months before a doctor would be able to typically spot it, like that is massively, massively important. Or I think didn't, um, uh, what the fuck's the Elon, Elon Company? Uh, NeuroLink. Neurlink. Yeah, uh, there was a guy the, uh, there was a Neuraling video that came out recently. Um, um, About a guy who has ALS? Yes, ALS. ALS who basically completely lost the ability to speak. Like, he could make noise, but he just could not form the sounds to, like the sounds in a way to actually form the words. Like, he was still all there, but he just wasn't able to speak. And Neurrelink was used in this context to give him the ability to speak.

There was another guy who, I want to say, was he fully disabled? The guy who played StarCraft? Neurlink gaming. Is this one? Is this the one or is this a different one? What game was it? What game is this? Oh, he's playing Boulder's Gate here.

Yeah, I know there was one, it was like another. I know there's a different video of someone playing, Counterstrike with it there's various other like people have been like given the ability to do things that they were just not able to do and like part of that is

like it's AI trained there's AI involved in this I think people are so focused on the the job aspect that they completely like completely lose the additional things outside of that the accessibility

the medical benefit being able to to limit water usage by being able to find leaks before people normally would find them, or really small leaks that are kind of hard to spot anyway. There's a lot of, there's like a lot of nuance in this discourse that I think immediately gets lost. Because things just get like, things just get really, really heated. And I think a lot of people just don't want to have a discussion. because if they have a discussion, then

that means they need to acknowledge that maybe their opinion wasn't entirely formed. I don't like AI being and everything, but at the same time, saying you want a pause and everything is just not... Like, there actually are people's lives being improved by this tech existing.

And maybe you can say like these are I like AI in this thing, I don't like AI and this thing, but oftentimes it's the same companies doing things in these different things and you also have these like large open models that are available now and even if you would have cut off commercial stuff entirely, which is not going to happen because China's not going to cut off commercial development. Like you can say, oh, we're just not going to be doing in America anymore, but then China's not going to stop and various other places are not going to stop. Maybe places that were not involved would jump in now they see like a major contender in that space

has disappeared. But I think we exist in... We exist in very exciting times. We exist in very, very exciting times. And yeah, if you like technology, if you like seeing what computers can do, I don't think there is like a more exciting time in quite a long time.

One more AI thing I want to mention just right now. very minor thing. You know a lot of people myself included would use like the overuse and frankly the use to begin with of M-Dashers as an indicator that something is AI because outside of people that are

like you know professional professional writers who write in a very formal way very few people actually use an m-dash. Now it's not a guarantee that if you see an M-Dash it's going to be

AI. However, it might be a, um, not a guarantee whatsoever anymore because here we have Claude Opus 5. Obviously, you know, you have your regular AI sort of text. What I found, the extra drop isn't the free tier. It's a regression. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Obviously, m dash here, m dash here as well, M dash here. Here is Opus 5.5. The extra drop is a bug in the billing refactor. The free tier change accounts for only I wonder the 50 of Acmeys, August, drop the other blah blah blah, blah. But notice Not a single M-Dash.

Obviously you could always tell the model like, hey, don't use M-dashes, whatever, all this good stuff. But it's, at least that tell. Every time there's like a slightly new model that comes out, every little, like there is just like a little

additional tell. that is slightly, slightly being discovered, just slightly being dealt with slightly being, uh, slightly being, um, ironed out. And I, I've, here's the thing, I've been caught out. I've been caught out so many times recently, not realizing that something was AI. Like, I, I, I share something, I look at something, and then I look at the comments after I shared it, I'm like, oh, that was AI. Obviously, you have ones that are obviously fake, right? But there are these, there's these, like, very subtle ones where I actually don't know. I actually just do not know at this point.

And maybe there's just me. Maybe I'm just so used to seeing it now that, I'm so used to seeing things that are fake, that I have no idea what is real. But I don't know. Maybe I'm just so used to it. that I've just lost the ability to see it. Outside the most egregious, outside of the most, like, ridiculous examples of things that are just obviously fake. Is that a good thing?

Probably not. Probably not. But it is a thing that I have definitely noticed. Yeah. Things also that I've noticed. This is gonna sound weird. You probably have heard about it already. I kind of just want to talk about it here

because it's really fucking stupid. I assume you know about minions, right? You know, the yellow things that boomers love that they post on Facebook all the time, but also there happen to be like a movie, you know, we all know the minions. So there is a minion router. It's not a meme, like this is a real thing that exists.

Like, you can buy one. Minions, Wi-Fi 60 router, AXE 5400, tri-band, 24 gigahertz, 5 gigahertz, all like normal, good, funny router stuff. Now, the real funny router stuff about this is, people think the Minions Router being baller is a joke, but I've extensively tested it and is one of the best possible Wi-Fi 6E routers

money can buy. Someone at, like someone at Illumination Studios, like, I don't know, $80, and the Routter manufacturer is like, got you, fam. This is like not a meme. Like, this might sound like a, meme, but let me see where I can find the other post. If I look up Minions Router, um, yeah, so this is, it's not even like a new thing. This is from two years ago. I bought the Wi-Fi 6E Minions Router. It is shockingly good. Like, apparently this is just, and look at this

fucking app, man. This app is so fucking stupid looking. But like, this is not a new thing. but apparently it's actually like a fucking insanely bowler router what is the actual use of the wait is this a different thing uh oh yeah no this that that was yeah that was the that was the same router as well what is the actual use of the kevin daveling

minion series Wi-Fi 60 gaming router I was recommended this by a friend who used to have one of his network although it looks like a gag gift he said it actually improved his wireless cave billies on his network yeah yeah Like it's actually, it's actually a fucking, like people, is, is not a meme. It's actually not a meme. Like, I didn't realize, are this something I'm just realizing now?

LTT did a video on this. Like fucking two years ago on short circuit. I had no, like, apparently it's actually insanely fucking good. What, why? And how I'm only just finding out about it now? Like, genuinely, how did I, how did I not know about it? this until right until like today you are you can like they're still available to buy like you can buy them the problem well actually maybe not maybe you can't buy them right

now because ever since it got a bit more attention and people have been like discussing it once again they basically sold out like everywhere so I actually don't think you can buy them at the very moment But when they're in stock, when people forget about them once again, which they will inevitably do, I guess if you want a absolutely cracked router and you don't want to go down like the open WRT route, hey, I guess buy the minion router, which is not a statement I ever thought would come out of my mouth, but apparently it has. So, yeah, buy the minion router.

So, something I wish I didn't have to talk about, but I guess we probably should. The ancient texts are entirely being lost. So this is something I saw floating around. Found in a now ex-co-worker's desk, condoms with zip ties, and some type of basket read holding it together. We use gloves to handle it, no smell, we work at an engineering office. Now, anyone my age or older probably immediately knows what they're looking at here. If you happen to not know what you're looking at, let me just show you a trend from a long time ago. I don't remember when this was like starting.

I guess people are still doing it up until a couple of years ago, so I'm surprised that someone who's apparently working in engineering department doesn't know. but there was something known as the egg drop challenge the idea was drop an egg from whatever height they happen to be at sometimes it's off the building sometimes it's like

off of just a table but drop it from a okay this doesn't actually show the drop drop in a certain height and the goal is to make sure that the egg does not get broken Mark Robera has a video. Here we go. So this is from... yeah, here we go. This is from 11 years ago.

It's not even... okay, I thought it was like four years ago. The video, the link said four years ago, but it's actually 11 years ago here. Okay, that makes more sense when people were actually doing egg challenge stuff. Um, so what are we dropping off here? We dropping off of a bridge? So I guess we... Look at baby Mark Rober, Jesus Christ. Oh, we're actually just throwing them. Okay, that works as well. But yeah, that is obviously what this is, right? That's obviously what this is.

But the comments here, man. So obviously top comments, like, looks like an old egg drop challenge. An engineering challenge did in school. Can you build an egg carton that can survive two-story, egg than decide two-story drop without breaking the egg? Yeah, some people think it's like R-rated evidence. But in reality, it looks like some dumb-ass, slight autistic engineering project.

Edit, I'm an engineer, fair enough. How do you know they're unused? How do you know a condom is unused? I think it's pretty obvious if it's unused. I think it's pretty damn obvious that it is unused. Yeah, it's not even like a new experiment. Like people were doing this a long time ago. Do they have a kid of the right age to be doing an egg drop?

Or they're just an engineer and we're doing it in school or something? There's normally some rules. you can't imagine condoms a common one. There's nothing that weird about it. Fucking engineers. In this case, a non-fucking engineer, which is why they didn't need the condoms.

Ha-ha, get it. Get it? And you only have one half of... Sorry, right, Lamount. We can't even see the entire object, but we know it has no smell. Opie needs to lick it for science. This fucking, this subreddit, man.

No smell and headlines. Skip the first natural question. What does it taste like? Look at these people. Just like so confused. What's the actual fuck? I don't know. But I'm scared.

Bro, no one but your ex-co worker could possibly know. I think people know. But, like, the ancient texts are what the actual fuck? Why the fuck would anyone know what this is? Maybe he was born. Like, it's... What the heck is that? Like, have the ancient texts really been...

Like, it's not even that long ago. It's actually not even that long ago. Have the ancient text really just been... lost that much, that something that was like as big as the egg drop challenge people don't know about anymore. How? How? And the worst part is, I'm looking at things right now. There are people in 2025 that were doing the egg drop challenge. Now it's not like a thing that, it's not like a major thing people still talk about, but like, you're in an engineering department. Like, this is not some, like, weird, surprising engineering thing that, like, no one would ever

consider doing. This is, like, one of the most, like, basic of basic engineering experiments you can do, engineering challenges you can do. I've got to imagine that they are not an engineer. They say they work in an engineering office. I have to imagine that they are likely one of like the HR department people or like something else. Because there's there is no way that you could be

an engineer and not know about something like this. Surely not. Surely not. Like I don't even want to like imagine there is a possibility that something that was this big has been this forgotten.

But it very well might be. It very well might be and I might just be, I might just be, be getting old. I might just be getting old and people just don't remember things which were like, do people know about the cinnamon challenge anymore? Do you know about the ice bucket challenge anymore? I guess people are like, they've seen so many of these TikTok challenges that like, they show up for a day and then disappear immediately and no one ever thinks about them ever again.

I guess people are just, they've been, they've seen so many challenges, they've seen so much of this go on that the idea that... You don't even thinking about an old challenge is just like an alien concept. But the internet moves so much slower back then. Like, how long... When was the Cinnamon Challenge? Like, what year was that?

Back in the early 2010s. There's someone who did it in the 2025. What the fuck are you doing? And... Oh, I guess it came back to life with TikTok. Okay, that kind of makes sense. But yeah, that was like a thing

like 14 plus years ago. And it was a thing for like well over... Okay, it was first in 2001, again popular in 2007, peaking in 2012, and then tapering off in 2014. Okay, okay.

But like, the internet moved just so much, slower back then that things like that would stick around for so long and everyone knew about it nowadays like I'll see these videos that are viral and I have no idea about them like good example I don't know anything that's going on in like brain rot like is that still a thing that we'll talk about if he'll move on past like the AI brain rot stuff I don't know like maybe it's just being older and I'm just not paying attention to like certain parts of the internet

but I don't like there's so much shit that goes on that I have just no idea about, like, at all. I don't try to keep up with it. I don't know what's going on. I'm too focused on things I actually care about that any of this, like, random other bullshit, it just, like, goes way over my head, and I just don't, I don't think about it at all.

Yeah, yeah, I like, I don't know, man. I don't know, but it, it kind of makes me sad. You know what else makes me sad? Microsoft. Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft. Xbox patents, new way to inject ads into gaming. Now, ads in video games are not new, okay? The idea of doing advertising in a video game,

that like we've been doing that basically since we could represent things in video games. I'm not going to go with the obvious example firstly. I'm going to go with the, uh, fun example. Um, I'm going to go with the example of, where is it? Metal Gear Solid 4. Oticon, every time, every time he's on a computer, he is on an Apple device. Every single time he is on an Apple device. He has a Mac right here.

Uh, I think he'll still. has an iMac right here and then obviously Snake has the iPod as well. Here it is. The iPod, what is it, shuffle or whatever it is? Yes. Because, oh no, I think it's just a right, whatever. Whatever, I'm fucking no, I'm fucking no iPod. Here's an iPod because iPod. I think it's just a rate, whatever. Doesn't matter. Now, the, the less stupid. example is racing games. Games have like racing games like a game like Horizon 6 that has licensed cars. Those cars in the game are there to advertise the cars. They like maybe

not you know, oh you know trying to directly sell a car, right? Because a lot of the cars that are gonna be in a game like this, most people are not buying them, right? Most people are not going to buy, I don't know, what's some, what's some fucking random expensive bullshit? Okay, maybe you can buy one of those now. Let's, 2026,

2025 car. What do we have? Yeah, you know what, there you go. A Bentley Continental GT speed, or what else do we have? What's some other 2025 car? Ah yes, yes, definitely not going to be lying this one. A Ferrari F-80.

However, they are in the game as a way to like advertise the brand, and there are plenty of cars that people might buy. For example, Ford F-150. Or, yeah, you go. Ford Mustang GT. These are cars that people actually, you know,

Probably can't afford, but probably it would buy anyway. Or maybe they'll buy it. The Ford F-150 Lightning. The EV of Ford F-150, because Americans love their fucking Ford F-150s. For some ungodly reason. Or if you go to a military shooter, those games have licensed guns. The guns are licensed from the company. That is an ad for those guns.

Now again, a lot of those guns, you're likely never going to buy. Because a lot of those guns, you cannot buy them. But we're talking about, like, you know, a 1911 being in a game. I guarantee all of the games that have had 1911s in them, that has sold some 1911s. There is no chance whatsoever that that, like, people knowing about that gun has not been influenced, by its appearance in many, many video games.

The more obvious example that people immediately we spot, again, we can go with Fossa, or we can go with something like, um, um, fucking Grand Turismo. Both, with Grand Trivino, you have both real-life tracks, but also on those tracks, you have advertisements, because on race tracks, you have advertisements. So you might see like a Dunlop ad or a very,

other ads, or you play a game like FIFA, and it is not out of place for there to be ads alongside, like, the sides of the field. Those are also at, like, they're not just like advertising random companies because they feel like it. They are advertising them because the companies have paid to specifically be advertised there, or you have collaborations with games like Fortnite, you know, there's always been, obviously it's more now than it used to be in the past, just because games look better, but there's always always, you been advertising in games. What we are talking about here though is more of a mobile game kind of deal. So this was spotted first by Respawn First who uh I love I fucking love

pattern diagrams man I actually adore pattern diagrams they're so fucking stupid. So filed under publication number US 2026 026 026 0258 a1. entitled Contextually Aware Management of Interactive Software Application Access, the Nuax Soft Tech aims to bridge the gap between free-to-play monetization and core gameplay by serving ads only during natural stopping points. Instead of disrupting gameplay such as an intense boss fight on an arbitrary timer, the system uses game engine signals for ad delivery. Players start the game with a block of ad-free time, e.g. 30 minutes or one complete level,

as the timer nears its completion, the ad-delivery system opens. a brief promoted content window, the game engine sends out natural pause events, such as after clearing a boss fight, end of a cutscene. Imagine you just finish a cutscene. It's like a 30-minute cutscene. It's like, hey, time to watch an ad. Completion of a quest, entering a load screen. Load screens, I don't really see as a big thing now, because a lot of games just loads so fast. From there, the ad tech freezes the game state to serve a video or static ad and rewards the viewer with a fresh ad. They reward the viewer with a fresh ad credit. The reward is you don't have to see ads for a certain period of time. What a fucking great reward that is The tech is using a strict filtering logic if a video game engine sends a pause hint to the ad serving system or the play is still in the middle of a boss fight or a match Ads will not be served and ad break is only fired when a game pause hint lands inside an active listening window

The tech is most likely be used for free-to-play games on Xbox PC and Xbox cloud gaming in the future the filing lines with Xbox initiatives on of exploring ad-sported tiers for Xbox cloud gaming and free-to-play games by making ads appear during natural stopping point in the game. Microsoft wants to eliminate disruptions, but regardless, ads are never going to go down with gamers. There's one I think that are very likely we're going to see it in. And that is possibly a lower-tier game pass. So, you know, how a lot of people got very angry about,

oh, well, game pass, the price increased, all that stuff. What if they reintroduced a lower-price tier? But that lower price tier would have ads that come in during the gameplay. Ooh. Ooh. Now, I'm not giving them ideas. I'm sure they've already thought about this one. And I guess we'll see in the future if they decide to actually explore that.

But don't you love it? Don't you love the world you live in right now? Don't you love how just absolutely amazing everything is? I know I do. every day I'm so happy that I play like 20 year old JRPGs every single day it makes me happier and happier and happier

that I don't have to deal with this that is to do with this bullshit because it is fucking insane last year Microsoft announced it would start charging $80 for its games starting with the outer world too the backlash to this reveal was so strong that Microsoft walked back to the plan

saying it wouldn't charge $80 for games in 2025. True, they wouldn't charge in 2025. We'll see what happens in 2027. Now, it's not, um, okay, depending on who you ask, it's not all bad with Microsoft. Because there has also been this right here, continuing our reset, published by Matt Booty. What a fucking name. You definitely got bullied in, uh, in primary school and high school for that name. My apologies for having to deal with having the last name, booty. Anyway, um, first we are eliminating 268 roles across Halo Studios. So a bunch of people at Halo Studios and other First Buddy Studios are getting nuked. The action completed since July,

inclusive of the studio divesture, bring us about three quarters of the way through previously announced restructuring. I'm deeply grateful for what our colleagues have built, and I know how difficult today will be for those leaving any teams built around them. Second, we are reorganizing our studios. The goal is to strengthen our franchises and games by operating at fewer business units, aligning groups already work closely together, and focusing our publishing expertise. Basically, cutting back on a lot of the corpo bullshit that has produced some of the, some of the slop over the past.

Well, actually, that's the worst thing. It's not even slop, because some of the fucking studios just, haven't released games. I don't know what they're doing. So, Activision will expand its remit to World Edge as well as rare. Activision will also be developing the next Halo title led by a... So you have... That's so funny.

Activision will also be developing the next Halo title led by a new purpose-built team that is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty. A small team at Halo Studios will continue support. supporting the Halo community and games in market. So it sounds like Halo Studios is getting completely killed. Like Halo Studios is the studio they have to build Halo. If Halo's not being built by Halo Studios, why did they exist? It sounds like once they're done supporting Infinite,

likely that studio is getting the axe, or it's going to be merged into another studio and it's just not going to exist any longer. Bethesda will expand its remit to include Obsidian, which will continue its current projects, including Grounded, as well as the new full-out project, made in collaboration with Bethesda Game Studios.

So they're making another fucking full-out game because they've been told to fucking release the video game finally. King will expand its remit to include Microsoft Casual Games, uniting our two global leaders in casual game design and live operations, no one fucking cares about King. Playground and Turn 10 will come together as one studio focused on the Forsa and Fable franchises. These two studios have been creative and franchise partners

for over a decade and today's changes will formally move their work into one team. Third, an update on our studio divestures. In August, compulsion and double fine return to management with their IP, backlogs and runway funding. Undead Labs has now successfully transitioned on similar terms and with a new publisher release stated K-3 on Game Pass on day one. Unfortunately, two separate agreements, the Ninja Theory fell through.

We will now begin consultation with employees on a proposed closure while continuing to explore other paths forward. Consultation with Arcane remains underway and expected to continue through the end of the year. Today, our focus will be on supporting those affected and treating one another with care and respect. I will spend time with our studios all over the next week at our October 6th Town Hall

and we'll come together as an all Xbox team to reflect on our progress and look ahead to one of the strongest game lineups in our history. I don't think you can ever achieve that because it's not Halo 3. But, you know, I wish you luck. There was a lot of real, massive overhiring in the game industry for a long time, especially during COVID. COVID, there was so much overhiring. And it seems like companies are finally, done to realize that they can't just push out slop and then expect people to buy it.

There are franchises that people will buy because there is zero competition in the market. If you want to play a soccer game, you will buy FIFA because you will buy FIFA. There's just no, there's, you don't, you don't have choices. Yes, there are games that are not real world players, but if you want to play, if you're looking for a game that has licensed teams, that has real players, you're going to, you're going to, gonna play FIFA. If you wanna do F1, you're gonna play the F1 game. You know, there are these games out there that have zero competition and will make infinite money because that's just what they do until people get bored of playing that kind of game, which they likely never will because there

is a new crop of gun and ball gamers. But outside of that, when we're talking about other video games, they actually have like competition, you actually have to make good games. You can't just burn money. This is something I think Sony has like started to, has like started to realize you can't just infinitely burn money until the end of time and expect people to buy your terrible video games eventually people

will just stop buying your terrible video games and you will have to deal with that like you there are only so many concord you can release before you don't have any money to release another concord like that has to eventually come to an end and it seems like a lot of that is ending a lot of the

like Xbox notably, again, is cutting things back, is actually trying to at least trying to appear like they're making something people care about. I'm so curious to see what happens with an X Halo that's not being made by Haley Studios. It'll be so funny if it ends up

actually being like a really good game. It will be incredibly... Now, if it's being made by a team that is at Activision, I would imagine there's probably some Caller Duty people involved in that. What that's going to mean for Halo? I don't know. We'll have to wait and see on that one. But I have a feeling it's going to be... It's probably going to be a very different kind of game than

what we've seen recently with Halo. Is that going to be good? Is that going to be bad? I don't know. I don't know. But I think there's definitely... There's definitely some... Room for change, we'll say. Room for change. we will definitely say. Now, the last thing I want to talk about, I talked about this last time, but we actually seen some updates now as of like today, as of recording,

I guess maybe yesterday. Smart glasses to be banned in all Western Australia public schools. Pressure on federal governments grow as another council banned pervert glasses. So Sydney is going to be,

like, The Sydney, like the main Sydney area, it includes like the Sydney beaches are going to be banning smart glasses as well. So it seems like there is a like wide ban on smart glasses that is likely going to be coming in in Australia relatively soon. If it doesn't happen federally, it seems like it's going to happen like state by state or council by council basis anyway. And yeah, I don't, I kind of said my piece. on them last week. I don't want to see the tech entirely die, but I do think there was

kind of like with like East scooters when a lot of the early, there was a lot of early push for them without any regulation where they can be used and who can use and all of this stuff. I do think there definitely needs to be a lot more push to like

understand whether they're being used and understand the places they shouldn't be used. Like if we're talking about smart glasses, right? If people don't know it's a smart, like their smart glasses, these could very easily be used as a cheating device in a test, right? And that's something that obviously in schools you probably shouldn't do. Also, the fact that you kind of don't want people walking around with a camera pointing at everyone else at a school. Like, that seems kind of weird and definitely, definitely an area where there's definitely going to be some problems that are

going to arise from that, especially if people do certain things with them, whether it be recording fights or much worse than that. And yeah, it's definitely something which should be probably dealt with, but on that note, I think we're to sign off there. Unless there was anything else I want to mention, I think I got over everything except some like minor

things that I don't really matter anyway. So yeah, I will bounce off there. So, let me know thoughts. That's my regular channel outro. Go subscribe, all that stuff. I guess let me new thoughts down below.

All the good stuff. Yeah. I'm going to go. I'm going to balance. I've had a bit of a headache the entire recording, so hopefully that can go away by the end of the day. And yeah. Be good. Be safe. We are entering spring here in Australia. It is currently, what is it today? It is 24 degrees, but it's going to get to, well, it's going to be 27 degrees tomorrow. So we'll see how that goes. And yeah, yeah. Yeah. Be good, be safe, all the good stuff. And I am... I was going to press the thing before I said out. I am out.